Photography, 1960s to Today

UCLA was one of the first universities to offer a specialization in photography. This was thanks almost entirely to the efforts of Robert Heinecken (1931–2006), who earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in art from UCLA and went on to become one of the Department of Art’s most influential professors in the 1960s and 1970s. By approaching the photograph as not merely an image of something, but an object about something, Heinecken encouraged students to push the medium beyond straight photography and into new aesthetic and conceptual territory. Just a few of his students who went on to become well-known artists include Darryl Curran, Pat O’Neill, Carl Cheng, Ellen Brooks, Robbert Flick, John Divola, Patrick Nagatani, and Uta Barth. In addition, Heinecken was instrumental in guiding the Grunwald Collection, then housed at UCLA as the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, toward the acquisition of photographs. He made significant donations of his work and that of others to the collection; he oversaw the production of student portfolios, giving examples to the Grunwald; and he encouraged students to gift their own work.

Photography has remained an important study area at UCLA. The appointment of James Welling and Catherine Opie to the faculty in the 1990s influenced new generations of photographers; their students have continued to produce work that not only explores the formal and conceptual aspects of photographic representation, but questions the very nature and scope of the medium.