Marvin Heiferman is an American curator and writer, who originates projects about the impact of photographic images on art, visual culture, and science for museums, art galleries, publishers and corporations.
Biography
As Assistant Director of LIGHT Gallery, New York, Director of Castelli Graphics and Photographs, New York, an artist representative and an independent curator, Heiferman has organized influential thematic exhibitions and worked with a wide range of artists and photographers including Eve Arnold, Garry Winogrand, Robert Mapplethorpe, Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, Robert Adams, Nan Goldin, John Waters, and Richard Prince. Known as an early champion of color, narrative and appropriation photography, Heiferman shifted the focus of his work in the mid-1980s to develop projects explored the impact of mediated and vernacular images on history, society, culture and everyday life. In 1991, Heiferman became a founding partner of Lookout, a company that, for a dozen years, produced innovative exhibitions and cultural projects for major museums, humanitarian organizations, publishers, and imaging and media corporations. Since 2002, Heiferman has conceived and produced exhibitions and online content for clients including the New Museum, International Center of Photography, and the Smithsonian Photography Initiative and the Smithsonian Institution Archives. His book, Photography Changes Everything, with features approximately 80 interdisciplinary texts on photography's active role in shaping memory, history, and experience was based on an encyclopedic online project he organized for the Smithsonian. A contributing editor to Art in America, Heiferman has also written for publications including Artforum, Bomb Magazine, Bookforum, "Photoworks", and ArtNews. He is a core faculty member in the International Center of Photography/Bard College MFA Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, and teaches in the School of Visual Art's MFA Program in Photography, Video and Related Media.
Selected Exhibitions
Bill Wood’s Business
Now is Then: Snapshots from the Maresca Collection
The Art of the X-Files, Harper Prism, New York, in association with Twentieth Century Fox, and 1013 Productions, Los Angeles
Flaming Creature: Jack Smith', His Amazing Life and Times, Serpent’s Tail, London/PS 1 Museum, New York
Fay's Fairy Tales: Little Red Riding Hood" and 'Fay's Fairy Tales: Cinderella. Photographs and text by William WegmanHyperion Books for Children, New York
Park City, photographs by Lewis Baltz, essay by Gus Blaisdell, Artspace, Albuquerque/Castelli Graphics, New York/Aperture, New York
Online and media projects
Why We Look, a Twitter-based project that follows breaking news stories about photography and visual culture.
The Bigger Picture: Photography at the Smithsonian), an interdisciplinary blog, launched in 2009 by the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, that explores Smithsonian photographic archives, assets and issues. Heiferman acted as creative consultant, chief editor, and contributor.
click! photography changes everythinga web-based project sponsored by the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, invited experts in various fields and the public at large, to explore the power and impact of photography on history, culture and everyday life. Heiferman was editor and creative consultant.
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Producer of Nan Goldin's 800-slide projection presentation with accompanying soundtrack.
The Electric Blanket December 1, 1990, the first Day Without Art. An outdoor slide projection with music, presented at The Cooper Union, New York. Project director with Nan Goldin and Alan Frame.
