DAVID MARTIN HEATH
Canadian, born United States
David Martin Heath, photographer and teacher,
began photographing in the early 1950s and in
1957 moved to New York City where he developed
his own dark, lyrical style of ‘‘street photography’’
while working as a photo assistant to earn a living.
His deep commitment to the art of photography
propelled him to publish the seminal book,A Dia-
logue with Solitude, in 1965, which was the outcome
of two successive Guggenheim fellowships in 1963
and 1964. His photographs explore the human psy-
che, delving deeply into the most intimate moments
of his subjects, and communicate these emotions on
both very personal and universal levels. His subjects
include the wide array of emotions found in chil-
dren, the relationships between men and women of
all ages, and the character of solitude and fragility.
Using a variety of media from 35 mm to Polaroid
instant film, Heath’s studio is the street where he
photographs human nature and the human condi-
tion. His influences came from not only photogra-
phy and the arts, but from philosophy, religion, and
childhood experiences. Fundamentally, his photo-
graphs are best viewed not as single images, but as
sequences: series of emotions, thoughts, and res-
ponses to what he is seeing in his environment,
presented in poetic relationships to each other to
elicit an effective and affective sense of his vision.
What I have endeavored to convey in my work is not a
sense of futility and despair, but an acceptance of life’s
tragic aspects. For out of acceptance of this truth: that
the pleasures and joys of life are fleeting and rare, that
life contains a larger measure of hurt and misery, suffer-
ing and despair—must come not the bitter frustration
and anger of self-pity, but love and concern for the
human condition.
(Heath 2000, Preface)Born in Philadelphia on 24 June 1931, Heath was
abandoned by his parents at the age of four years
old and grew up in foster homes and orphanages
until quitting school at the age of 16 to pursue a job
as a photo finisher. After his service at the end of the
Korean War, he returned to the United States with
an even keener interest in photography and pursued
post-secondary education in the Philadelphia and
Chicago areas. Heath was influenced and inspired
by the photo essays in the magazines of the 1940s
and 1950s, and was particularly moved by Ralph
Crane’s 1947 Life magazine essay ‘‘Bad Boy’s
Story’’ concerning orphans and foster children,
which addressed his personal experience.
In 1957, Heath left Chicago for New York City,
where he attended a class with W. Eugene Smith at
the New School for Social Research in 1959 and a
workshop in Smith’s loft in 1961. Inspired by the
photographs of his teacher, he realized the power
that photography had as a means of artistic expres-
sion. Heath worked as an assistant to commercial
photographers during the late 1950s and early 1960s
and attempted to build a career around photojourn-
alism. However, his desire was to be a creative
photographer. His photographs were exhibited first
in the 7 Arts Coffee Gallery in New York, and he
was given his first major one-man show by the Image
Gallery in 1961. In 1964, his photographs were pub-
lished byContemporary Photographer(Winter 1963/
1964) published by Lee Lockwood, himself a photo-
journalist. During the 1960s, he exhibited with major
museum and university art galleries, including the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, the George
Eastman House, Rochester, New York, and Yale
University in New Haven, Connecticut.
His street photographs of the 1950s and 1960s were
influenced more by the work of Robert Frank, which
stressed the ambiguity possible in the single image
and its relationship to other images in a sequence. His
photographs—tragic, comic, and poetic—are imbued
with a sense of solitude of the individual. ‘‘Disen-
chantment, strife and anxiety enshroud our times in
stygian darkness’’ (Heath 2000).
Recognized as one of the seminal photography
books of the 1960s,A Dialogue with Solituderemains
the central body of work by which Heath is recog-
nized. The 82 photographs, taken over a ten-year
span from his service in Korea to his time in Phila-
delphia, Chicago, and New York City, achieve the
unified and meaningful statement that he sought in
his work. Arranged in 10 sections and designed to be
viewed in sequence, the photographs investigate the
human condition—from isolation, loneliness, des-
pair, and destruction to laughter and love. John
Szarkowski, Director of Photography at the MuseumHEATH, DAVID MARTIN