The Artist As Muse

Artist as Muse is a series of black-and-white portraits of contemporary artists. Originally made as part of a fashion project pairing individual artists and designers, the portraits came to comprise the series on their own.

In their frank representation of human figures, the images of Artist as Muse represent an exception to Heck’s usual rejection of photography’s documentary side in favor of its more explicitly creative qualities. Unlike most of his work, these are photographs meant to capture their subjects, not create them—a tacit acknowledgement of the creative potency of those subjects, all of whom are artists Heck holds in high regard. Ordinarily unseen, the visionary makers of their own outspoken works, here the artists become subjects of reflection and vision, their humanity depicted in stark black and white.