Crowd Watching a Failed Resuscitation, Central Park

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.