Moyra Davey: Burn the Diaries - Softcover

I wandered through Davey's book in a bit of a trance, and indeed it is written in a dream-like, fragmentary style, and interspersed with images of Davey's own photographs. Burn the Diaries is about how we are changed by the books that we read, and how the books that we read change the way that we write, and even the way that we process our lives. Davey has presented to us her own diary, and in order to do so she could not burn it.--Sarah Gagnon "The Improbable "

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.