Erik Madigan Heck Shares 'Studies in Stillness' in Harper's Bazaar UK July 2020
/Fashion photographer Erik Madigan Heck creates a personal exploration of nature’s colors, textures and magnificence in ‘Studies in Stillness’. The images feature Heck’s beloved wife Brianna Killion Heck and reflect their creative dialogue within the constraints of the global pandemic. The images are published in Harper’s Bazaar UK July 2020.
In 2014, Erik Madigan Heck’s family life was featured on the cover of TIME magazine, accompanied by an interview with Alexandra Genova called ‘Behind the Goddess Myth’. It’s a superb interview and intellectual discussion about the photographer’s work, accompanied by gorgeous images of Heck’s family.
Heck’s family portraits flirt between reality and fantasy. The Connecticut forest backdrop of his home isn’t quite nature as we know it: woodland greens become turquoise blues and blushing pinks become coral peach. “Color has always been one of the most important things for my work—and up here it’s the changing of the seasons too,” he says. “So I’ll take what’s already there and I’ll elaborate. I‘m not inventing things that aren’t there, just pushing them in certain directions.”
Heck’s relationship with color stems from a life-long love affair with painting. “For me painting was always more about the color,” he says. “And I think that’s where my photography crosses over; how you can push color in a way that a painter can with a brush.” He painted as a child, learning from his mother. “The first painting of hers I saw was of a nude mother on a cyan background, with a red piece of cloth. That hung over my bed when I was a kid and now hangs over Winston’s crib,” he says. “It looks a lot like the photos I’m now making of Brianna.” Painters like Edouard Vuillard, Michael Borremans and Marlene Dumas as well as photographer Harry Callahan also influenced him.