ICP Photographers Lecture Series: Moyra Davey

Moyra Davey is a New York-­‐based artist, whose extraordinary body of work encompasses photography, writing and filmmaking. While many move toward larger, digitally manipulated photographs, Davey works at a modest scale (her images are typically 20 x 24 inches), prints her own work, and maintains a practice of analog photography. Her photography gives you a close and often psychologically embedded look at domestic interiors, dust and ordinary objects. The notion of time is also present among her photographs as well as in her video Fifty Minutes. Her images allow us a detailed, reflective and thoughtful look at objects and materials we might otherwise ignore.

“For me, the Copperheads established a set of working terms for Davey’s oeuvre: a close attention to detail, in which the eye is trained on that which is conventionally overlooked, combined with the precision of what photography can offer (the macro lens), and a sensitivity to the ways in which psychic themes are embedded in everyday objects.” –Helen Molesworth in Long Life Cool White: An Introduction to Moyra Davey  

Moyra Davey began making photographs as a teenager in an improvised darkroom. She studied photography at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. She was a participant in the 1989 Whitney Independent Study Project in New York, New York. Davey is exhibited internationally, having had solo exhibitions throughout the United States, Canada, and Switzerland. In 2008, she had an expansive survey of her photographs, writing and films (entitled Long Life Cool White) exhibited at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. Her works are in the collections of numerous prestigious institutions, including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis among others. Davey’s images and writing are widely published. Her books include Copperheads, Long Life Cool White, Speaker Receiver, and the Problem of Reading. She also conceived and edited Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood. In addition to being a photographer, writer, and filmmaker, Davey has also been on faculty at the following institutions: Graduate Photography Department at the School of Visual Arts, the General Studies Program at the International Center of Photography, BFA Program at York University, and the International Center of Photography-­‐Bard MFA Program. Moyra Davey is represented by Murray Guy, New York, and Goodwater Gallery, Toronto.