Moyra Davey

From early portraits of her five sisters, to photos taken above bookshelves and under beds, and later series on the New York City subway, Moyra Davey has spent four decades with a practice that comprises photography, film and writing. This book surveys Davey's work, bringing together her photos and film-stills; her writings on photography, memory, art and historical figures; alongside a suite of new essays and interviews. Davey examines the texture of life: defaced currency, empty whiskey bottles, the dust under a record player's needle. She also acknowledges that photos can be mementos, and for some time has printed her images as a kind of correspondence, sending them through the mail; when unfolded, they bear the creases and stamps of transit. Davey's films and essays are characterized by a similar intimacy, evinced by the artist's own peripatetic, literary mind. These are some of the figures that haunt her imagery: Walter Benjamin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean Genet and Chantal Ackerman. As with her photographic accumulations of fragments, Davey approaches these touchstones indirectly, drawing from their letters, journals and lesser celebrated works to understand how they committed to living creative lives.

Based in New York, Moyra Davey is an artist whose work spans photography, film and writing. She has produced several films, most recently Wedding Loop (2017) as part of documenta 14 in Athens. Davey's publications include Burn the Diaries and The Problem of Reading, and she is the editor of Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood. Davey's solo exhibitions include those at Portikus, Frankfurt; Bergen Kunsthall; Camden Arts Centre, London; Kunsthalle Basel; and Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge. Her work is held in major public collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Tate Modern in London. Davey is the 2018 recipient of the Scotiabank Photography Award, and in 2004 was granted the Anonymous Was a Woman Award.