Series V: Photographs, 1946-2018, undated

Scope and content:

This series contains Heeley's photograph collection. It encompasses a range of formats, including negatives, contact sheets, printed photographs, slides, and ferrotypes. These photographs are wide-ranging in their scope, covering many aspects of Heeley's private and professional life. Many photographs document Heeley's life in the theater: pictures of costume fittings, set construction, dressing rooms, workshops, and set models - along with a large number of production stills - illuminate key facets Heeley's design process. Other photographs document Heeley's international travels, including nature and street photography relating to the places where Heeley lived and worked (Stratford, Ontario is particularly well represented). Heeley's social life is documented in portrait photography of his friends and candid snaps of parties, picnics, and other gatherings. His home life is reflected in photographs of his interior design, his doll collection, and his cats. Most photographs in this series are unlabeled and undated and, out of context, it can be difficult to determine what they depict. Personal and professional photographs were invariably kept together (i.e., in the same envelope, slide case, contact sheet, negative roll, etc.) and it is not always immediately clear how photographs relate to each other. However, even the photographs with an unclear origin may provide insights into Heeley's visual sensibility and provide a sense of the people, things, and places that inspired Heeley's design aesthetic, stored, as they were, alongside photographs of his designs. This series contains several duplicate photographs - either printed photographs that were developed twice, or images that exist across multiple formats. Many of Heeley's personal photographs can also be found in Series IV.

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