Heji Shin (born 1976) is a German photographer known for her provocative, often overtly sexual, art and fashion portraits of people and animals.
She attended art school in Hamburg, but dropped out and moved to Berlin, where she started her photography career taking portraits for a German economics magazine.
[2][4] Her commercial work includes the cover of Robyn's album Honey (2018) and a 2017 campaign for American fashion label Eckhaus Latta which featured photographs of couples engaging in sex acts that were censored with pixelation.
[3] Her first US solo show was The Great Penetrator (2013), featuring portraits of hoofed animals from a Berlin zoo juxtaposed with images of a street corner and a naked hips and vagina.
A photograph of the monkey nibbling on a dildo was featured on the cover of the May 2016 issue of Artforum.
[7][8] Shin finally photographed West in a Los Angeles studio, where he left after a shoot lasting only ten minutes.
"[2] Her most recent work is a series of portraits of roosters called Big Cocks.
"[2] Though her work is provocative and boundary-crossing, she said "Doing something simply out of a desire to be transgressive is very stupid, you know, just to break certain taboos.