Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of David Heath

Jimmy Coble

11/4/2015

Philadelphia Art Museum Reflections

Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of David Heath

This was an interesting exhibit to see. I was struck at first by how dour and stern almost all of the subjects of the photographs were. As I went through the exhibit, I saw the contact sheets from his film. Two of the negatives showed a crowd. In one, there was a man smiling at the camera and another laughing. In the next negative, it was the same crowd taken maybe a second or two later that showed all of the subjects frowning. These were pictures of events in real life, and without context, I would interpret very different things. For the rest of the pictures that I saw, I kept this in mind that photography shows an instant, but without background into the picture, it doesn’t mean anything.

I personally liked this exhibit more than the other one. This could be a number of things. I first of all felt that it was a more cohesive theme. I also thought that the photographs were related in that it was all by the same artist. This made it easier for it to seem more linked. But more than anything, I thought this show was more interesting that the other one in a visual sense. These photographs made me want to look at them, whereas in the other exhibit, I looked at the photographs without feeling that pull. It felt like there was an order to view this collection of prints.