Moyra Davey (photography)

Narrator: In We Are Young and We Are Friends of Time, Davey reproduced more details of Wollstonecraft’s letters. She also photographed diaries by Mary Shelley and Clair Clairmont—the first woman was Wollstonecraft’s daughter, while the second was Shelley’s stepsister. Davey was interested in these women on a couple of different levels. Their status as early public intellectuals was one, of course. But she also became interested in details of their lives–birthdays, names, and so on–that corresponded to those of her own friends and family. By focusing on these details, Davey brought an autobiographical element into the work. That’s most visible in the two photographs that are outside the main grid of We Are Young and We Are Friends of Time.

Moyra Davey: Just to the side are two photographs that I took when I was just starting out as a photographer. I was probably in my early twenties, maybe twenty-two. One is a photograph of a snooker table in Montreal, and the other is a photograph of two pinball tables. They're works that I made when I was close to the age that Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont were when they were writing these diaries and letters.