This photograph of a frustrated child on a New York City street was made at the time of A Dialogue with Solitude. Children were a favorite subject for Heath, perhaps for their ingenuous demonstrations of emotion. This little boy cries alone, ignored by his mother who turns her back on his displeasure. Pressed into the upper right corner of the frame, she is tall and emotionally inaccessible. Though she turns away, perhaps to chat with a friend or neighbor, her emphatic black pony tail directs our attention back down to the little boy, as does the sweep of the car's window and the curve of its fender, drawing the eye to his gathered brows. The boy's small size within the composition signals the scale of his tiny personal anguish. The visible outline of his rib cage suggests a deep intake of breath and the depth of his sobs, wracking his entire body. This sort of childhood sadness haunted Heath, and he observed and examined it, perhaps seeking to neutralize its power. To capture this emotion, he often moved in close to his subjects. In the darkroom he refined images through close cropping and centering tiny gestures, fleeting motions or expressions. In this way, he achieved a formal solemnity from his small negatives. Nearly all of his images are in some sense introspective, yet through all of his activity he seemed to find little relief from the demons of his past.

from Acton, A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame: Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, 2019)