Marvin Heiferman, “Why We Look”
As part of the ArtNOW Visiting Artist Series, Marvin Heiferman will speak about grief, photography and image sharing. After the March 2020 COVID-related death of his husband – the noted cultural critic and curator Maurice Berger – and when grief struck and as words failed him, Heiferman suspected photography wouldn’t. Since then, daily postings of images and their accompanying captions on his Instagram account have functioned as intimate, frontline reports on the experience and processing of grief. Widely viewed and written about, his online project has engaged thousands in a communal dialog and is now the subject of an upcoming documentary film short.
About Marvin Heiferman: Heiferman organizes exhibitions, online projects, and publications about photography and visual culture for institutions that have included the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, International Center of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S. 1 Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, and the New Museum. Earlier in his career and as a gallerist and artist representative, Heiferman worked closely with a wide range of artists and photographers including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, and Richard Prince. He has written for museums, galleries, monographs, blogs, and magazines including The New York Times, Gagosian Gallery, CNN, Artforum, Design Observer, Aperture, Art in America, and BOMB. The author of 15 books including Talking Pictures (1994), Photography Changes Everything (2012) and Seeing Science (2019), Heiferman has edited numerous other books including Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images by Maurice Berger (Aperture/New York Times, 2024) and Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, (Aperture, 1986). Posts to Heiferman’s social media projects – collectively called WHY WE LOOK on Instagram, Threads, Facebook and about the ways photography transforms our lives – are uploaded daily.
About ArtNOW: ArtNOW, a visiting artist series, transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries and embraces provocative works that challenge what we know and what we think we know. It fosters experiential conversations and art-making between contemporary artists who work with emergent creative practices, students, and the broader community. ArtNOW guests have worked with and among many genres such as art, science, and technology (AST); experimental music; interactive and site-specific installation; internet art; new media; performance art; screen writing; social practice; sound art; and video performance. Recent visiting artists have included Wafaa Bilal, Hasan Elahi, Coco Fusco, Jennifer Haley, Matt Kenyon, Tim Miller, and Sheryl Oring.
ArtNOW events are free and open to the public.
Photo credit: Sara Macel