Review • Maurice Heesen Critical Evaluation

For my last project, I was required to create a festival and look at an artist that inspired us. For our festival idea, we have chosen “Realms of the Unknown”, which explores alternative portraiture photography, focussing on magical and “weird” side of capturing people. Maurice Heesen likes to tell stories through his photography, developing a narrative that we can follow, no matter how dark or disturbing it may be.

Although you could class Maurice Heesen as a known practioner, in my own personal work I have never seen nor heard of him. From his biography on his website, it doesn’t seem like he has exhibited in any exhibitions, which is why I chose him as I thought using this work as a solo exhibition would be impactful and get his name out there more as an arts based photographer rather than commercial. I, personally, prefer this work that focussed on the surreal and bizarre, rather than his commercial work. He has worked with numerous clients, such as Nike, Vodafone and McDonalds.

The set of photographs I have decided to base my research on for my own development and photographic imagery for this festival is “Muerto Feliz”. The tagline for this piece is “We only fear death because we don’t know what is there. It’s better to keep laughing in life until we meet death.” His piece concentrating on people laughing and smiling until the very end, grinning at the camera whilst they lie in a pool of their own blood with the world seemingly carrying on. My favourite image from the set of 5 images is the image showing the man at the table with the gun in his hand, with what I believe is his wife or partner washing up in the background. This give me the idea that Heesen wants to show that when we die, the world carries on and we will just end there. Quite a depressing thought, but very well executed through this series. Maurice Heesen is the standard of photograph I aspire to be if I ever decided to take the freelance, arts based, commercial route of photography.

I decided to choose Maurice Heesen for this festival because of the nature of his photographs. I have never seen some execute gore and blood in their work so professionally as Maurice Heesen has, hence why I am so intrigued and impressed by his work. If we was planning the logistic of the festival, his and my work would have to be exhibited in an age restricted room because of the nature of the imagery. Subjecting young children to these images would be wrong. I plan to develop a set of photographs looking at high fashion models, with the hair and make up, but with a twist of blood and gore. I plan to use dark lighting and shadows to manipulate the viewer and make the imagery seem dark and confusing.