Annemarie Heinrich emigrated to Argentina with her family in 1926, to the province of Entre Rios, where her uncle first introduced her to photography. She perfected her training first with the Austrian photographer Melitta Lang in Belgrano (Buenos Aires), then at a studio opened in the Argentinian capital by Sivul Wilenski, a Polish high society photographer known for his retouched and stylised portraits similar to Hollywood imagery, who hired her as his assistant. From 1933 onwards, she collaborated with the magazines Mundo Social, Novela Semanal and Sintoria, for which she took photographs of international artists performing at the Colón theatre. This was instrumental in bringing her closer to the world of the performing arts, particularly that of theatre and dance. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1938 in Chile. From 1940, she became a major figure of Argentinian photography. As a pioneer of live performance photography working in the fields of theatre and cinema, her portraits stood in contrast to the suave haziness often favoured by Argentinian pictorialists. She made use of dramatic camera angles, such as low-angles mimicking the audience’s position at the foot of the stage, and of studio lights that surrounded faces with a halo effect. Meticulous attention to lighting and retouching her prints are characteristic of her style.

International acknowledgement came in 1954 when her work was shown at Photokina, the international photography fair in Cologne, and in 1956, when the American Ballet Theatre featured photographs she had taken of the company during their Argentinian tour in their press pack. She was a mentor to many photographers and hired Sara Facio as an assistant in 1957; Alicia d’Amico and Heinrich’s own children, Alicia and Ricardo Sanguinetti, perpetuate the legacy of her studio to this day. Her first book, Ballet in Argentina, was published in 1962. Her commitment to the recognition of photography led her to join the Argentinian National Commission for Culture in 1975 and to become a founding member of the Latin-American Council on Photography in 1978. She also took part in the foundation of the Argentinian Council on Photography in 1979.