Erosion, Sediment, Fragment: Tracing Layers in Moyra Davey’s Writing and Photographs

The chapter explores Moyra Davey’s photographic work Copperheads in relation to the artist’s writing. Drawing on a range of art-historical and literary scholarship that addresses Davey’s practice as well as Derrida’s writing on the letter and Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s notion of the fragment, the essay motivates the terminology of sedimentation and erosion to show their co-dependency. A myriad of absent hands seen to be fumbling for change emerges in the discussion through the sedimentary and erosive marks they leave on pennies. Copperheads thus emerges as a critique of extractive capitalism that erodes its human and planetary “resources.” Keywords: Moyra Davey – Copperheads – Walter Benjamin – Jacques Derrida – Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe – Jean-Luc Nancy – fragment – erosion – photography – writing