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xtie's review against another edition
5.0
A wonderful smattering of essays, clips/snippets (clippets?) from Davey’s lense (literally and figuratively). Even though they seem disparate and appear unrelated, they are brought together by little repeating motifs, works, repeated references, often coming back in a slightly different form the second, third, fourth time. Especially obsessed with the essays “Caryatids and Promiscuity” and “The Problem of Reading”.
gorgia's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
My favourite chapters were the ‘problem of reading’, and ‘I confess’, I thought both of these were really well written, and I appreciated that they were at the end weirdly. A good way to reflex at the end of a book the thought of reading and the people who were mentioned in previous interview-based chapters. Also, ‘Hemlock Forest’ was really good too. An enjoyable read I am sure I will be going back to soon.
floortje_fauna's review against another edition
4.0
A very scattered and meandering essay collection that sometimes feels like picking up random pages scattered on a desk, tracking trains of thoughts that don't necessarily lead to fixed conclusions. Discusses photography, writing, film making, reading, and the process of artistic creation whilst being in a chronically ill body.
georgemayhew's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
dillarhonda's review against another edition
Index Cards by Moyra Davey – photographer, filmmaker, writer– is a collection of musings on photography and the broader context in which Davey makes art. Many of the entries are brief enough to fit on an, you guessed it, index card and flit back and forth from the personal to the theoretical to the artistic. By turns fragmentary or edging into stream of consciousness and highly theoretical, the collection, I imagine, is a glimpse into Davey’s own thoughts. Later in the collection, when Davey begins to discuss her own work in earnest, her style congeals into something between personal and theoretical resulting in some of the most affective chapters.
frankie_s's review against another edition
5.0
Obsessed. Have ordered a copy to scribble all over. Read on Scribd originally.
mmmadelyn's review against another edition
"Remember Jean-Pierre Gorin, who'd admit to a fundamental lack in his filmmaking: the subject of the film was the need of the maker to be making something, and the search for what that something could be. Disarming to have this lack so forthrightly acknowledged. [...] But aren't confusion and drift truer to how lives get lived? Isn't structure a contrivance? Instead, why not just editing? As in Pasolini's 'Observations on the Long Take,' about how death imposes an immediate final edit, gives meaning to a life." (57)
"I think of a fridge as something that needs to be managed. A well-stocked fridge always triggers a certain atavistic, metabolic anxiety, like that of the Neanderthal after the kill, faced with the task of needing to either ingest or preserve a massive abundance of food before spoilage sets in. I get an unmistakable pleasure out of seeing ... the contents of the fridge diminish, out of seeing the spaces between the food items get larger and better defined. This emptying out reminds me of the carcasses being eaten away by maggots in Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts. [...] Once every ten days or so the fridge fills up with food and the Sisyphean cycle of ordering and chewing our way through it all begins anew. This rodentlike behavior is my metaphor for domestic survival: digging our way out, either from the contents of the fridge, or from the dust and grit and hair that clog the place; or sloughing our way through the never-ending, proliferating piles of paper, clothing, and toys. Recently I read about a writer getting rid of four thousand books and hundreds of CDs, and emptying three closets full of clothes, and it made me think of how much we pad our lives with this stuff." (1)
"I think of a fridge as something that needs to be managed. A well-stocked fridge always triggers a certain atavistic, metabolic anxiety, like that of the Neanderthal after the kill, faced with the task of needing to either ingest or preserve a massive abundance of food before spoilage sets in. I get an unmistakable pleasure out of seeing ... the contents of the fridge diminish, out of seeing the spaces between the food items get larger and better defined. This emptying out reminds me of the carcasses being eaten away by maggots in Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts. [...] Once every ten days or so the fridge fills up with food and the Sisyphean cycle of ordering and chewing our way through it all begins anew. This rodentlike behavior is my metaphor for domestic survival: digging our way out, either from the contents of the fridge, or from the dust and grit and hair that clog the place; or sloughing our way through the never-ending, proliferating piles of paper, clothing, and toys. Recently I read about a writer getting rid of four thousand books and hundreds of CDs, and emptying three closets full of clothes, and it made me think of how much we pad our lives with this stuff." (1)