DAVE HEATH | 'PHILADELPHIA'

Acquired from the photographer, 1997, The Collected Image, Evanston, as agent

Dave Heath, A Dialogue with Solitude (Culpeper, Virginia, 1965), unpaginated

Keith F. Davis, Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2015), pl. 119 and p. 307

The number '72,' written in red ink on a small circular label affixed to the margin of this photograph, refers to the order of this image in A Dialogue with Solitude, Heath's definitive photobook published in 1965. The annotation ‘Master print: 1962’ in pencil on the reverse of this photograph indicates it was from Heath’s marathon printing session in the fall of that year in preparation for publication. Nearly a decade earlier, Heath also included this image in his maquette for In Search of Self: A Portfolio (1956). The present image, illustrated on page 41 of the maquette, is representative of the best of Heath’s early work. As a precursor to A Dialogue with Solitude, ‘the mood is resolutely inward; the focus is on acts of contemplation and self-awareness’ (Multitude, Solitude, p. 23).

A print of this image is in the collection of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. At the time of this writing, no other print of this image is believed to have been offered at auction.