Published by Dancing Foxes Press/National Gallery of Canada. Text by Moyra Davey, Dalie Giroux, Andrea Kunard.
Over the past 40 years, Canadian artist Moyra Davey (born 1958) has perfected a unique synthesis of photography, film and text to critically engage with the past, present and future of the world around her. Based on Davey’s eponymous 2019 film, I Confess unites three main sources in a chronicle of late 20th-century Quebec, shaped by themes of race, poverty, language and nationalism. Using American writer James Baldwin’s 1962 novel Another Country as its point of departure, Davey’s film also focuses on the life and work of Québécois revolutionary Pierre Vallières and Ottawa-based political philosopher Dalie Giroux.
Published to accompany the exhibition Moyra Davey: The Faithful at the National Gallery of Canada, this deeply personal and highly political book seeks to examine an unresolved chapter of Québécois history from a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective that draws attention to contemporary issues of separatism, while reflecting the artist's understanding of photography and text as unique corollaries. This publication features writings by the artist, Dalie Giroux and National Gallery of Canada’s Associate Curator Andrea Kunard, and a poster insert.
Published by Steidl/Scotiabank Photography Award. Introduction by Brian Sholis. Text by Eric Rosenberg, Moyra Davey. Conversations with Ben Lerner, Élisabeth Lebovici.
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 developing a practice that comprises photography, film and writing. This book surveys Davey's work, bringing together her photos and film stills, and 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 less celebrated works to understand how they committed to living creative lives.
Published by Dancing Foxes Press. Edited by Karen Kelly, Barbara Schroeder. Text by Moyra Davey. Introduction by Aveek Sen.
Initially known for her work in photography—which she has been making over the last three decades—New York–based artist Moyra Davey (born 1958) is also an esteemed writer, editor and, most recently, filmmaker, whose works layer personal narratives with explorations of other authors, filmmakers and artists. This book is based on two related projects that take form as text, photography and film. Les Goddesses (2011) collapses the lives of Davey and her five sisters with those of the daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th-century feminist writer and activist. Hemlock Forest (2016) weaves references to Wollstonecraft, Chantal Akerman and Karl Ove Knausgaard with her own family stories. During the making of Hemlock Forest, Akerman took her own life. Her death soon engulfed Davey’s awareness, prompting a broader exploration of Akerman’s and her own biographies, amid more universal themes of compulsion, artistic production, life and its passing.
Published by ICA, University of Pennsylvania/Museum Moderner Kunst/Dancing Foxes Press. Texts by Moyra Davey, Alison Strayer.
In the oeuvre of New York artist Moyra Davey (born 1958), literature and writing are as significant as photography, film and video. In her latest text, Burn the Diaries, Davey considers the work of French playwright and political activist Jean Genet, while examining fugitive moments from her own life. An essay by her childhood friend and reading companion Alison Strayer, written in response, reflects on Davey's themes. The publication is part of a group of new works--also including photographs, a film and an installation of her signature mailers, which Davey sends to family, friends and acquaintances--that illuminate the relationship between image and language. This volume can be read both as an artist's book and a catalogue to accompany the exhibition at mumok, Vienna, and the ICA, Philadelphia, in 2014.
Moyra Davey: Scotiabank Award
Moyra Davey: Les Goddesses/Hemlock Forest
Moyra Davey: Burn the Diaries