Abigail Heyman

• Name — Abigail Heyman • Birth Name — Abigail Heyman • Born — 1 August 1942 • Birthplace — Danbury, Connecticut, U.S. • Died — 28 May 2013 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Education — Sarah Lawrence College • Occupation — Photographer, photojournalist, educator • Notable Works — Growing Up Female (1974) • Children — 1

Heyman was born in Danbury, Connecticut, to real estate developer Lazarus Heyman and Annette Heyman. Abigail was the second of two children. Abigail was the younger sister to her brother, businessman Samuel J. Heyman, who was born March 1, 1939. She attended Sarah Lawrence College with intentions of becoming a writer, and graduated in 1964.

She began the study of photography once she was out of college and attended some photography workshops. Heyman continued to gain knowledge about photography through freelance shooting.

Along with her other responsibilities related to her company, Heyman took the time to focus on wedding photography as a personal project. This project developed from her work documenting family life and her reflections in deciding to marry a second time. In attending over 200 weddings by the age of 44, Heyman discovered that every wedding has its own story. She sought to find this story, along with the reasoning as to why people get married. Heyman fully immersed herself into her photography sessions at weddings by not only acting like a guest with a camera, but by engaging with the couples through questions. She also photographed weddings because there was something in her own weddings that remained unresolved. Going to other people's weddings with a camera has put her in touch with her personal drama, too.

Heyman was the first woman to be invited, by Charles Harbutt, into the photographer's collective Magnum Photos, where she was active from 1974 and 1981. Heyman was also a photojournalist, her work appearing in Time, Life, Ms., Harpers and The New York Times Magazine. In the mid-1980s she was director of the documentary and photojournalism department at the International Center of Photography (now International Center of Photography) in Manhattan. In the 1990s, Heyman joined the International Center of Photography in Manhattan as director of the documentary and photojournalism department. In 1981, Heyman, along with Harbutt, Mark Godfrey, Mary Ellen Mark, and Joan Liftin, co-founded Archive Pictures Inc., an international documentary photographers' cooperative agency in New York City. During her busy career in the 1980s, Heyman filed a lawsuit on her brother, Samuel, in 1982. She filed for breach of trust as a fiduciary in certain family trusts. However, her brother denied these charges and the claim was dismissed. Though her work is most identified with the Feminist Movement, the specificity and deeply psychological nature of what she captured transcended the movement itself. As Ms. Liftin told The New York Times this June, "As a feminist, she was not so much about marching. She took pictures that showed what the marching was about." Heyman died on May 28 at the age of 70 due to heart failure. She is survived by her mother, Annette Heyman, of Palm Beach, Florida, and her son, Lazar Bloch, of Brooklyn, New York.

Heyman married for the first time at the age of 23, after graduating from college. She then married her second husband in 1978, with whom she had a son named Lazar Bloch.