Extempore
Reflections & Ruminations on Art & Personal History
Elicited & Edited by Michael Torosian
1988
Dave Heath is known to connoisseurs and collectors as the creator of A Dialogue With Solitude, an incomparable book which National Gallery of Canada curator James Borcoman has described as "the most important book by a photographer to appear in the 1960s". A Dialogue With Solitude was the product of more than a decade of personal exploration and the resolution of Heath’s creative search to enunciate his statement in the visually poetic form of sequence.
Extempore presents Heath’s recollections of this period of development and discovery as an artist, amplified by a theoretical perspective that has informed his work for the last thirty years. Reflections upon his youth in Philadelphia, work in Chicago and artistic maturity in the New York art scene of the fifties, illuminate the photography that was to earn him two Guggenheim Fellowships. Derived from interviews conducted and edited by Michael Torosian, Extempore presents a dialogue with an important American photographer.
Specifications
Composed in Linotype Fairfield with DeRoos for display and printed on Mohawk Letterpress Text. Two previously unpublished photographs - a portrait of Heath and a rare and powerful image by Heath from 1951 - have been printed on gelatin-silver paper and tipped in. The book is further illustrated with a half-tone reproduction of one of Heath’s hand-rendered layouts for a sequence from ADWS. Quarter bound in natural linen and Canson paper over boards in the uniform style of the series. Thirty-six pages, 6 x 9 inches. Edition 150 copies. May 1988. Homage Volume III
Status
Out of print.