Robert Heinecken: Object Matter

Robert Heinecken. _Lessons in Posing Subjects/Matching Facial Expressions_. 1981. Fifteen internal dye-diffusion transfer prints (SX-70 Polaroid) and lithographic text, mounted on Rives BFK paper, 15 × 20″ (38.1 × 50.8 cm) overall. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Gift of Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson. © 2014 The Robert Heinecken Trust

Robert Heinecken. Lessons in Posing Subjects / Matching Facial Expressions. 1981

Internal dye diffusion transfer prints (SX-70 Polaroid) and lithographic text on Rives BFK paper
Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson
© The Robert Heinecken Trust

Glenn Lowry: Heinecken made a number of works called Lessons in Posing Subjects. This one is called Matching Facial Expressions. Drew Sawyer.

Drew Sawyer: He's taken photographs with a Polaroid camera of catalogs in which all the figures appear to have the exact same expression. I think in many ways the Lessons in Posing Subjects is a sociological study of stereotypical poses, facial expressions that any viewer could find in a catalog or a magazine in the early 1980s.

Glenn Lowry: To make these images, Heinecken used an SX-70 Polaroid camera, which contained the developing chemicals and apparatus inside.

Robert Heinecken: These are all photographs using the SX-70; copying things out of mail-order catalogs. The text is written in such a way as to identify these pictures as serious social documents or politically relevant documents.

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