Dave Heath. Elevated in Brooklyn, New York City, 1963 © Dave Heath, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto
Dave Heath. Washington Square, New York, 1960 © Dave Heath, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto
At the age of 16, Dave Heath was paging through a 1947 issue of LIFE magazine when he came upon “Bad Boy’s Story: An Unhappy Child Learns to Live at Peace with the World,” a photo essay by Ralph Crane that explored the life of an orphaned by growing up in Seattle.
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Heath, who had been abandoned at the age of 4, immediately felt seen. Living in foster homes and an orphanage, Heath saw himself in both the protagonist and the journalist at the same time. Heath had already been participating in a camera club and recognized that photography could become a lifeline between himself and the world.
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It was a commitment to which he would give his life, using the camera to document the political, social, and cultural events of the time, while simultaneously creating an investigation of the photograph itself. Largely self-taught, Heath made it his business to learn the craft, theory, and history of his chosen medium in order to create for himself.
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Dave Heath: Dialogues with Solitude, on view at The Photographers’ Gallery in London through June 2, 2019, and the accompanying monograph from Steidl, provide a deep dive into Heath’s singular oeuvre that is a poignant and powerful look at the human animal.
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Dave Heath. Washington Square, New York City, 1960 © Dave Heath, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto