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Crowd Watching a Failed Resuscitation, Central Park
Crowd Watching a Failed Resuscitation, Central Park

Crowd Watching a Failed Resuscitation, Central Park

Artist Dave Heath (Canadian, born United States, 1931 - 2016)
Dateca. 1957
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 6 3/8 x 9 5/8 inches (16.19 x 24.45 cm)
Framed: 15 5/8 x 17 5/8 inches (39.69 x 44.77 cm)
Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Object number2005.27.4005
InscribedSignature Signed in artist's hand Front of Print Description: Lower left corner of print. Notations "ADWS negative, NYC c. 1957, master print 1962" Back of Print Pencil
On View
Not on view
Collections
DescriptionVintage gelatin silver print of a crowd of people with a policeman standing in the foreground. Notations in pencil on verso. Signature on front of print.Exhibition History
American Photography: Recent Additions to the Hallmark Photographic Collection. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO,  February 27 – May 14, 2000, no cat.

Rotation 7. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO,  December 7, 2009  – May 17, 2010, no cat.

Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, September 19, 2015 – February 21, 2016, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 19, 2016 – March 19, 2017, 144.

Gallery Label
In this image, reproduced in David Heath’s book, A Dialogue with Solitude (published in 1965), the source of trauma exists entirely outside the picture frame. Heath chose instead to concentrate attention on the onlookers, who are at once self-conscious of their voyeurism yet unwilling to leave. In the center stands a police officer, who looks in the opposite direction from most of the other spectators. Such tensions—between hope and despair, isolation and the crowd—characterize Heath’s imagery and the uneasy, introspective mood that several other artistic photographers pursued in this era.
Provenance
Purchased from The Collected Image by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1997; 
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
Published References

Keith F. Davis, “Multitude, Solitude:The Photographs of Dave Heath” in  Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Hall Family Foundation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 144.

Copyright© Dave Heath
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