Too good to be true

Photographer fakes, rather than trying to make, the perfect family

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Suzanne Heintz is notorious for her family photos. She captures the everyday household chores, the family vacations and the holiday festivities. In the photos, Heintz is vibrant and lively, usually with a big smile. In contrast, her husband, Chauncey, seems a bit stiff and her daughter, Mary Margaret, has the same blank stare. That could possibly be because Chauncey and Mary Margaret are mannequins.

In her Life Once Removed project, on display at Firehouse Art Gallery through March 29, Heintz uses mannequins as a statement about the expectations she’s felt throughout her life.

“The whole project stemmed from all the pressure I was getting from missing out on marriage,” she says. “It was like a scientific experiment, and I was saying, ‘OK, I’m going to try this on and see what I’m missing.’”

It all started 15 years ago when Heintz went back to art school to pursue her photography, and a professor assigned a project about a “personal myth.” At that time, Heintz says, the demand to start her own family had been building, and it was about to boil over.

“I was telling my mom about my latest boyfriend and how he wasn’t right, and she said, ‘Nobody’s perfect. You’re just going to have to pick somebody if you want to settle down.’ She didn’t mean it in the way that I heard it,” Heintz says. “But I got angry and said, ‘Mother, what do you expect me to do? I can’t just walk out the door and go buy a family.’”

But that’s exactly what Heintz did. The ideas started to percolate, and society’s requirement to get married emerged as her own personal myth. So Heintz went to a retail liquidation center and picked herself up a husband and a kid. Chauncey and Mary Margaret Heintz — naturally, they took her last name.

The title Life Once Removed refers to the blueprint the previous generation passed down as the standard of living. Heintz says our life image is rooted in what the previous generation taught us. With her photos, she says, she satirically comments on this idea of “perfect,” a word that she takes issue with.

“Perfect is unattainable,” she says. “Yet, it’s one thing we’re chronically chasing. Perfect also has judgment attached to it and that anything less than perfect is a failure. We all know life isn’t perfect, and that we’re constantly facing failure. But at the same time, we all really want to pull off the perfect performance. I’m no different than anyone else. We all fall victim to the same story.”

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Suzanne Heintz

Since art school, Heintz continued doing the project as a hobby and for the amusement of her friends. She always had a day job, working as a television art director for Starz, and says she never pursued being a full-time artist.

Over the years, Heintz’s camera has snapped many major family milestones. She’s also hit the road in search of those Americana destinations, such as Carhenge in Nebraska and Yellowstone National Park. And she’s even gone international — taking her plastic family to see the Eiffel Tower.

And in case you’re wondering if Heintz ever gets too swept up in her project, you’d be wrong. She says she’s not emotionally attached to her mannequins and has never felt compelled to talk to them.

“People expect me to personify them, but they’re just plastic,” she says. “I don’t feel at all like there’s a person in there.”

As the project evolved, Heintz and friends noticed that setting up the photos was just as, if not more, funny than the photos themselves. She then started shooting short films and video greeting cards, including a family ice skating outing and a romantic Valentine’s night full of “dancing.” Heintz is also in the process of shooting a three-part short film series titled “Playing House.” The first chapter is “Postcard from Paris,” showing Heintz and Chauncey taking loveydovey photos around the City of Love, and also shots of Heintz lugging her mannequin husband around the streets of Paris. She’s currently finishing up the next chapter, “The Vows,” detailing her recommitment ceremony to Chauncey.

Despite working on the project since 2000, it wasn’t until late 2012 that the media started to take notice. She slowly got more publicity from photography magazines, and in 2013 she and her mannequins went viral.

“I realized the potential for this thing,” she says. “I didn’t think any of this success was possible. I sold myself short. But, then I got calls from BBC, Forbes, Time Magazine and all these magazines around the world. … Once I realized how it resonated with everybody around the world, I saw the potential in it. Maybe this isn’t just a stupid little side project, maybe it is something significant.”

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Suzanne Heintz

Even after her project took off, Heintz was still faced with the societal question of what was next. That focus on “the next step” is a fundamental flaw that Heintz addresses in her work.

“Everybody gets this kind of pressure that you are never enough, that you’re never done,” she says. “Even with all the success I’ve had with this project, I still get met with ‘Congratulations! Now what are you going to do?’ Can I not just sit down for a second and enjoy the accomplishment that I just had? …

“We’re chronically putting the heat on each other in a way that is more than keeping up with the Joneses. It’s constantly like, ‘How are you good enough?’ And I don’t think that’s the best way to relate to people. You internalize what other people question about you. It’s this sort of this built-in undercurrent that no matter what choice you made it wasn’t the right one and [this question] of all the other things you haven’t done.”

The cultural standard to “have it all” messes with your head, she says. There’s a delicate balance that everyone is expected to achieve, and Heintz wants to rock that boat. Particularly women, she says, have this pressure to be defined by their relationships — wife, mother, best friend, sister, etc.

“When you stand on your own, people don’t know how to relate to you; it makes you feel like you did something wrong,” she says. “We’re constantly second-guessing. If you choose the kid path, you think you screwed up your career, and if you choose your career, you think you screwed up your kids. We’re always feeling like no matter what we’re doing it’s wrong. … It’s hard to stand apart from that and say that I’m fine the way I am.”

Heintz says she wants people to understand that her project isn’t just about marriage. She’s using herself as an example of greater cultural ideas of what women “should do” or “should be.” She makes sure not to romanticize the idea of perfection; she wants the photos to look “over perfect” to cause people to stop and think.

“I’m not against marriage, it’s just that I ought to be just as valid with just skin on my finger instead of a ring,” Heintz says. “There’s nothing wrong with being married, I just don’t think you have to be [married] to be OK. And I’m tired of people thinking you have to go along with tradition in order to live a successful life. … You have to find a path in your own time. There’s no being on schedule or behind schedule.”

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Suzanne Heintz

But, Heintz does see glimmers of hope for the future. She points out that her mother’s generation didn’t have interracial marriage or any notion of gay rights. In a world with much more social flexibility than it used to have, she says, society is starting to create its own standards.

“I hope the next generation learns to trust its own instincts instead of centuries-old stories,” she says. “We need to let the definition of women expand beyond looks, sexual value and their relationships. We need to start driving our own boats and stop responding to the way women used to be defined.”

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