Robert Heinecken is renowned as one of the most important post-war photographers, yet, for the majority of his career he happily shunned the camera. Exploring the notions and traditional ideas of photography, he preferred to work in alternative art mediums, such as sculpture, lithography and collaging. A self-described “para-photographer”, he famously cut up erotic magazine images in the 60s, re-working them into more conservative publications such as Time and Vogue, before placing them back on newstand shelves. But his photography is key to a long-standing and much-applauded career. Detailing a pinnacle point in his career, the late artist’s first UK exhibition Robert Heinecken: Lessons in Posing Subjects profiles his foray into celluloid. With a Polaroid SX-70 (an object he described as “the bedroom camera”) under his arm and a penchant for reappropriating found magazine images, the results are a satire on American consumerism – a comment on the industry’s dependence on sex to sell, well, absolutely everything.

With over 250 Polaroid images, created between 1977-82, included in a triptych of the artist’s work, images from Lessons in Posing Subject (from which the exhibition takes its name) and the more X-rated The Hite/Hustler Fashion Beaver Hunt will be on display. The third part of the exhibition is He/She, from which we showcase a selection of images here. In the series, Heinecken picks apart mail order catalogues selling everything from leopard print gowns to white knicker sets, restaging the shots and imitating the models’ seductively constructed poses, which are often self-shot and starring Heinecken or his partner. Accompanied by his purposely sarcastic or hostile instructions (“too much pressure is being applied causing the terry cloth robe to rumple in an unattractive manner”), the series is a darkly humorous manual that’s set on helping the wider population achieve much more than just the perfect pose.

Robert Heinecken: Lessons in Posing Subjects runs from 7 November – 11 January, 2015 at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool.