Arcana:

(HEATH, DAVE). Heath, Dave. Foreword by Hugh Edwards. With Brief Texts by James Baldwin, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Wright Morris, Rainer Maria Rilke, Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, Stephen Crane & Hermann Hesse. Culpepper, VA & New York: A Community Press Publication Distributed By Horizon Press, 1965. First Edition. 4to. Cloth. Photography Monograph. Near Fine./No Jacket. np, 83 duotone illustrations. Designed by Dave Heath. In a protective clear acetate dustwrapper. From Hugh Edwards' foreword: "A Dialogue With Solitude is a self-portrait in which the artist himself never really appears, but is revealed and interpreted by every detail. From the beginning of the sequence to its end, the viewer accompanies his unseen guide, out of darkness and troubled sleep, on a pilgrimage through an unpredictable environment where contradiction seems to be the only law. It is a solitude crowded with human beings, all of whom he recognizes and understands, but with whom he can make no exchange other than the gestures of an almost mechanical ritual. Along the way are pauses, marked by poetic quotations". Beginning with the Philadelphia native's tour of duty during the Korean war, "Dialogue"'s dark, murky images capture ten years of winding through an America seen through the shadows of Barnum, Sartre and Camus. With resonances of Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Lisette Model and Ed Van Der Elsken, Dave Heath's landmark book was a truly an innovative work upon its unheralded 1965 appearance, and remains one of the highlights of Post-war photographic literature. A bright, handsome example of the uncommon first edition (cited on page 104 of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's "The Photobook: A History Volume II" and page 43 of "From Fair to Fine: 20th Century Photography Books That Matter") lacking its fragile dust jacket and showing a very slight crimp to the tips of the boards at the lower foredge corners. It has been priced accordingly. Inventory Number: 020200