Research On Marvin Heiferman

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Marvin Heiferman

Marvin Heiferman is one of the prominent figures of the American visual culture, born on November 30, 1948. He studied at B.A., Brooklyn College in New York. He is a popular writer and curator who organize projects regarding photography, for famous institutes such as Museum of Modern Art, International Center of Photography, Smithsonian Institution, Whitney Museum of American and the New Museum. Heiferman has edited and authored more than two dozen books on visual art, cultural history, and photography. He has become an important figure for many magazines as his articles appear in many popular publications such as Mousse, Aperture, Bookforum, and ArtNews. He is a prominent editor of “Art in American” and wrote for many galleries, publications, blogs, catalogs, magazines, and museums. He is educating millions of students online who are interested in exploring nature through their talent of photography. His Facebook and Twitter-based projects are helping many people through his track breaking new stories about visual culture and imaging. He is famous for posting new material and research photography on his social media accounts so that he could appeal to those who have the potential to see art from a different perspective then ordinary people.

Since 2002, he has been arranging exhibitions for many famous clients that include the International Center of Photography and Smithsonian Institution Archives. This fact cannot be denied that he is the author and editor of many articles and organizer of many projects regarding the visual culture but one of his most important and attention-grabbing contribution is "Seeing Science”. In this book, Heiferman has offered a reader-friendly collection of pictures and essays about the role of photography in building human knowledge and visual science, starting from micro to macro level. According to Heiferman, both science and photography are intertwined so that our perception of viewing world could be shaped. He believes that for gathering information, learning and exploring world, scientists have been using photography for long.

Marvin Heiferman claims that science is less an edifice of facts and figures than a process of both inquiry and discovery. He believes that science is not dissimilar to art and artists engaged themselves with some scientific principles by using photography to imagine the world in a different way for presenting the new ways and experiences of seeing things. In the book “Seeing Science” perspectives how science could be perceptible have been given through the help of three hundred images with sixty short texts. Heiferman presented photography for promoting scientific advances and serving as a source for building a relationship between science and general public.

According to Rineke Dijkstra "Photography Changes Everything” is another revolutionary work of Heiferman in the field of photography in which he spots light on the changing aspects of photography. This book offers a provocative rethinking of the impact that photography casts on our culture as well as daily life. This book offers reader-friendly exploration that shapes our knowledge and world experience. In this work, he spotted a light on some of the important areas such as change in photography with time. He has been contributing a lot for making people aware of the importance of art by arranging exhibitions regarding arts, photography and visual culture in galleries and museums worldwide. Heiferman won awards for his services and these awards include Stock Photography Award and Types Director Clubs etc. Marvin Heiferman focused on the influence of photographic images on history and culture by arranging exhibitions in famous parts of the world. He has been a creative consultant of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative since 2005 and it was the time when he conceptualized the idea of “Photography Changes Everything”.

Taking a look at the work and contributions of Heiferman in the field of photography, it could be said that at present he is the only artist who has been highlighting important aspects of photography that were not revealed before by any artist. He believes photography changed with time and focuses on certain aspects i.e. what tourists want to see, changes in technology and how astronomical data is collected etc. In most of his online posts, he shines a light on how photography has changed depending upon what we see. He believes it depends on who is looking at the creation (photo or any piece of art) as it is not the art but the audience that beautifies the art, so it is important to educate people about art and its importance.

Marvin Heiferman is not only the author of various masterpieces of art or the editor; rather he is popular among people for his exhibitions that he arranges worldwide. At present, Marvin’s popularity is increasing because of his media and online projects. A few of his famous media projects are Why We Look, The Bigger Picture and The Electric Blanket, etc. Marvin believes by nature photography slows time to standstills for corral and flash freezing the information. He believes that photography is a way of keeping things alive as it is active and keeps the things in motion. Taking a look at the work and the contributions of Marvin Heiferman, it could be said that he is the one who is changing perception of world regarding photography. He is responsible for compelling people to think of photography as a separate subject that changed over time. It won’t be wrong to say that he is the ardent supporter of the conception that photography changes everything and it changes itself as well.