Robert Heinecken (1931–2006) has been called one of America’s most influential contemporary, conceptual photographers, and yet he rarely used a camera. His definition of photography encompassed everything related to the photo; rather than focusing on the photographic image as a creation derived solely from a camera, his interest was on the relation of methods and formalism – often in an irreverent and humorous way – to popular media.
This first large-scale monograph presents an overview of Heinecken’s work from the 1960–90s, highlighting his exploration of the material possibilities of the medium, and how he created new methods to record and produce photographic objects using collage, lithography, Polaroid, silver gelatin prints, color processes, digital prints and experimental uses of darkroom chemistry.