Periodical #5,

1971

Heinecken, a photographer and printmaker who experimented with media and techniques, considered himself a "paraphotographer" because he rarely took his own photographs. Instead, he chose images from magazines, pornography, advertisements, and television and shaped them into critiques of contemporary culture. His inventive combinations of appropriated imagery allowed him to expose the mainstream media’s hypocrisy, sexual provocation, and subliminal suggestions. In this work, a laughing woman from a fashion magazine is overprinted with a soldier holding two severed human heads, transforming a seemingly innocent ad into a disturbing commentary on capitalist desire and the gruesomeness of war.