Great interview on the Saint Lucy blog with Eva Respini, curator of the MOMA exhibition on Robert Heinecken.
Launched in 2011 by Mark Alice Durant, Saint Lucy is devoted to writing about photography and contemporary art. He co-wrote Robert Heinecken: A Material History in 2003.
They talk about much more than Robert Heinecken, but here is a taste of their thoughts on Heinecken:
MAD: Heinecken’s opposition to narrow definitions of what it meant to be a photographic artist manifested itself in many ways. One of them is this iterative process you talk about which I assume came from his training as a printmaker. Looking at the show downstairs, one of the things that really strikes me, just how many layers we look through to the work. There are frames within frames, there are palimpsest pieces, incisions, and interruptions in the supposed transparency of photography, which was embraced and canonized at MoMA and much of east coast photographers, critics and academics.
ER: When I go through the show it still amazes me how unafraid he was in terms of using new technology, new materials, new processes and as you say, layering them on top of one another. Anytime something came out, some new material or camera, Heinecken was experimenting with it immediately in such an uninhibited way. [ read entire interview ]
.