Heinecken (bottom left) used chance to create unusual juxtapositions like the images here and on the previous page. To create them, he removed a page from a magazine, applied Con-Tact paper to both sides, pressed the page against photographic paper, and shone a light through the page, capturing the images on both sides simultaneously.
while studying postmodern photography
remix strategies of appropriation art, an
in the 1980s, where art world stars like
artist who spent much of his creative life
Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Bar-
reclaiming personal meaning from cold
bara Kruger remixed and repurposed mass
and calculating images published in the
media objects, applying pop art ideas to the
mass media. The man was a visionary who
field of photography with dramatic results.
created transfixing imagery by combining
By the mid-1990s, histories were already
photographs from articles and advertising
being written around the major figures of postmodern photography. But there
decades before Photoshop. But back in the 1980s, all Biro knew
was one artist included in these histories
about the artist was one blurry photo-
whose work Biro didn’t recognize.
graph of the news anchor Connie Chung
Biro would eventually discover that the artist was an early pioneer of the
in an anthology. He didn’t even recognize the name. Who was Robert Heinecken?
All Biro knew about the artist was one blurry photograph of the news anchor Connie Chung. He didn’t even recognize the name. Who was Robert Heinecken? IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING
Heinecken was born in 1931. After moving around during his very early years, he grew up in Riverside, California, and enrolled at UCLA after high school. But Heinecken struggled to keep his grades up in college. On the verge of losing his university deferment at the height of the Korean War, he applied with some friends to become a marine pilot, a move that everyone in the group thought gave them a better chance of surviving the war than being drafted into the infantry. Heinecken was half an inch too short to qualify for pilot training, but he snuck past the tester with a trick that predicted his future standing in the art world: He filled his shoes with cut-out magazine pages. By the time his training was finished, the war was already over, and Heinecken took advantage of the G.I. Bill to head back to school. Following a strong interest in graphic design, Heinecken got his bachelor’s and then his M.F.A. in printmaking. After school, he taught photography in downtown Los Angeles and was later hired as a professor at UCLA’s main campus, which was going through a sustained expansion as soldiers like Heinecken used the G.I. Bill to advance their education.
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LSA Magazine / FALL 2015