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Despite the fact that any discussion of recent photography usually includes reference to Robert Heinecken, until this major retrospective, few people had much first-hand knowledge of his work. One reason was that it simply had not been accessible, especially in the East (Heinecken is from Los Angeles). His photographs are usually big, one-of-a-kind, technically complex and/or three dimensional, and are therefore difficult to acquire, transport, exhibit or reproduce. Another reason we hadn’t seen the work was a tendency of purist critics and curators to ignore or reject Heinecken’s work as “unphotographic,” because he frequently goes beyond the small-format, silver image to incorporate hand coloring, chemical staining and drawing, along with borrowed images from popular sources: sometimes he even prints (heaven forbid!) on photosensitized canvas.

It is these methods—and the flexibility and freedom they represent—that have had the greatest influence on Heinecken’s younger contemporaries. When he first started showing in the early ’60s, experiment was all but stifled by the “straight” esthetic. A number of photographers had taken tentative steps away from that narrow view, and of course Pop artists had introduced photographic images and techniques into their work. But Heinecken was the most visible bridge (to photographers, at any rate) between extremes. Proposing that all photographs be thought of as falling along a continuum between the totally unmanipulated print (which cannot exist outside theory) and an entirely hand-worked picture, he circumvented the “either/or” attitude then prevalent in both photography and art communities.

Because of his remoteness in mysterious Southern California and because of attractive rumors about his lifestyle, Heinecken became something of a legendary figure. This exhibition de-romanticized him considerably, and modified a widely held view of him as a sort of artist-guerrilla. To be sure, we do sometimes feel there’s a sniper in our midst, as when he photolithographically adds the image of a young Cambodian soldier holding two severed heads to the pages of fashion magazines; or when he presents subliminal and explicit sexual appeals in immediate juxtaposition by shuffling and rebinding pages from porno and glamour magazines. But the bulk of his work is not nearly so didactic as these examples. And though it is playful, satirical and frequently displays a Duchampian reliance on system, these elements are usually secondary to a concern with formal problems. This exhibition forced us to admit that what Heinecken really does is make beautiful objects. This is evident in his Le Voyeur/Robbe Grillet series, 1972, elements of which have been carefully crafted from photographic fragments of a woman’s body, and then reconstructed into abstractions which suggest a wide, undulating landscape.

Heinecken is a photographer, regardless of die-hard critics and despite his stated intention to move away from showing solely in photographic contexts. He works with photo-sensitive materials and frequently includes references to the medium in his work. Pictures made by literal “contact printing” of such things as a bacon-and-egg breakfast he refers to as “Documentary Photograms”—ordinarily contradictory terms, since “documentary” usually connotes the kind of narrative, socially concerned reportage once the mainstay of Life magazine, and “photograms” (camera-less silhouettes on photosensitive paper) are usually associated with the formal experiments of the likes of Man Ray or Moholy-Nagy. If nothing else, Heinecken’s photograms point up the inadequacy of current photo/esthetic terminology.

Seeing Heinecken as a photographer commenting on his own medium may get us beyond his more obvious social-political statements. In fact, no matter now densely he manipulates his photographic information, Heinecken always retains enough photographic content to suggest the original referent(s). This is apparent in the many works produced by multiple exposure of photosensitive materials to images from pornographic magazines (the Porno Photo Litho, Different Strokes for Different Folks and 14 or 15 Buffalo Ladies series). The results—dark masses of flailing arms and legs—leave us with the kind of paradox Heinecken loves. Are we to read these pictures as abstract compositions or acts of social criticism? Well, neither—and both.