

heinecken

This photograph by Robert Heinecken is a development from his 'Are you Rea' series created in the 1960's. In the 1960's Heinecken created a series of photographs made by taking magazine pages selected on their aesthetic and used a technique similar to a photogram, showing both sides of the page. Later in his career, he strayed away from using negatives (black and white) versions of the image, and instead starting including their true colours using the same process. Heinecken's series was created to show that social media has affected most individuals, being the basis of what people see as social normatives in the past 50 years. He used pages showing models and fashion to show unrealistic expectations being put on to young women, by using editting, makeup and showing models who often did not have a healthy lifestyle. Although including colour in his image, a high contrast, low saturation and colour changes have been made to create a darker, more solemn effect to the image. Due to heinecken focusssing on negative effects of the media on society, the colours used are dulled to enhance this negative impact. Despite the faces overlapping centrally and looking as though this composition had been planned, Heinecken states in a teaching video that he does not crop or change the positioning of the pages and all the photographs in this series represent true magazine size. The compositions of his images are purely from luck and trial and error, going through pages to find one suitable to his desired effect. By using light tables to create this image, Heinecken had no control over what two pages were on the same images and therefor took time to find a page which would look good. Despite creating the images to show a message about the imapct of the media, Heinecken states that when choosing his images he decided purely on aesthetic.
IMAGE FROM DEVELOPMENT OF 'ARE YOU REA' SERIES
ABOUT
Robert Heinecken was seen as a pioneer in the postwar Los Angeles art scene (according to Hammer museum). Heinecken often used second hand images from sources such as magazines, pornography and television, combining them with the use of light tables, collage and other mediums. Heinecken often explored themes such as gender and commercialism. The use of mixed media and second hand images highlight how popular culture has had an effect on society. Heinecken prides himself as not thinking of himself as a photographer in the 'classic sense' and compares his style/type of work to a paramedic or paralegal, believing he should not be compared to other photographers. Heinecken believes that now the mass media is somewhat our nature, being the thing that surrounds us the most, our environment, shaping how our lives are spent and how the information we know is learnt. One of his pieces showed a magazine page of Lynda Johnson whit whom had recently been popular with the media. Heinecken used this to show how media and public obsesses over celebrities day to day life due to envy and the attempt to learn how to act with the hope to become social accepted.



RESPONSE

I created my response using pages from Elle magazine. I decided to use this magazine as it is one of the most iconic and popular magazines in the UK. I decided to use the front cover which shows an image of Kylie Jenner. I decided this as today, reality tv stars are some of the biggest celebrities with some of the highest wealth in the World. In the past decade, when social media has been becoming more and more popular, the world has been fascinated with what celebrities like Kylie Jenner are doing. Unlike Heinecken, I used Photoshop to overlay the images to create a similar to effect to the way Heinekcen used a light box in his work. I also used colour balance to create a similar colour saturation to Heinecken's image.
I decided not to use flash due to the light reflection it created on the page.
I decided not to use the text images due to bad lighting and did not give my desired effect of how models shape how we view ourselves.