Joseph Heidecker, “Untitled”, 2003

#somereallygoodones, #josephheidecker, #untitled, #collage, #cabinetcards

The only other person who seems to know about Joe Heidecker is Cindy Sherman. She commissioned him to do some photo-based pieces of furniture.

Joe is no ordinary Joe. Almost twenty years ago three different friends contacted me to tell me about an art installation downtown in the windows next to the Grey Art Gallery at NYU that I had to see.

There were several large panels covered with small collaged 19th century Cabinet cards that were fun and funny, smart, rude and completely to my taste. The artist and I connected, and I went to his studio where I felt like I hit the jackpot. I bought some and got some to sell. Boy, was it fun, and we became friends.

Joe was at flea markets finding vintage albumen studio portraits mounted on 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 inch card stock and then messing with them. He would add plastic “googly” eyes, yarn, Letraset (press on) type, nail polish — stuff— and he would make art: droll, daft re-considerations of unknown folk — people — from the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

There is something tasty and nasty about this work. It is just the right size to hold in your hand, like a big cookie, and it makes you feel like a little kid finding something delicious and forbidden, subversive with bad words and penises for noses.

A photo historian friend remarked, in all seriousness, that it was a shame that Heidecker was “ruining” these vintage works. I would argue that he had rescued them and given them life.

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstorm hopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufart- lightning, #photographychangeditlifeitgavemeone, #josephheidecker, #untitled, #collage, #googlyeyes, #cabinetcards, #rude, #daft