THE HOURGLASS

Only some photographs speak to Joseph Heidecker. When he finds one, he knows it. “It’s just an impulse that hits me when I look at the face,” says Heidecker, a contemporary artist known for cleverly embellishing photographs and objects with signature embroidery and beading. “I look at a lot of pictures, and a lot of them don’t intrigue me or interest me at all. But then sometimes I look at a picture, and don’t ask me why, I just have this impulse to go into it. Some of them just give me this sense, like, I have to sew it up and add some blues.” 

Heidecker was trained in visual art and painting before he began a side career as an antiques dealer. His two interests—art and found objects—came together more than a decade ago, when he began to leave his mark on finds from flea markets and estate sales. Heidecker’s first solo show, in 2000 at the Washington Square East Gallery in New York City, displayed 150 cabinet cards from the turn of the century that he had hand-manipulated with stitching, drawing and other embellishments. Soon after the show, his work found its way into illustrious collections. Today he counts Brad Pitt, Benecio Del Toro and Cindy Sherman among his collectors. Recently, an Architectural Digest spread of Sherman’s home featured striking decoupaged furniture by Heidecker.

For Whisper Editions, Heidecker has applied his playful wit and sense of humor to a 1950s photograph of a pin-up weightlifter. Each piece is hand-printed from a vintage negative and individually handsewn with antique gold and silver metallic thread. No two are alike.

“Photography is such a high-tech process, a high-tech way of making art and portraiture,” Heidecker says. “I like to do the stitching because stitching is the antithesis of the high-tech process. It’s the low-tech process. I like to mash them up a bit.”

Shop Heidecker's edition for Whisper here.