Copperhead No. 72

Artist Moyra Davey (Canadian, born 1958)

Date1990

MediumChromogenic print

Dimensions24 × 18 in. (61 × 45.7 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Escalette Endowment

Object number2013.1.2

Label TextIn the late 1980s and early 1990s - that is, after the crash of the stock market and the fall of the Berlin wall - Moyra Davey was using a macro lens on her camera to take pictures of money. This activity resulted in a series of photographs called 'Copperheads.' In each 'Copperhead' we see the facial profile of Abraham Lincoln gracing the lowest form of American currency, the penny. To focus on the lowest denominator of value at a time when the market collapsed had a kind of sly humor to it, while the visage of freedom, as symbolized by Lincoln, could have been held in an uneasy relation to the narratives of supposed freedom that saturated the media's coverage of the fall of communism. In more concrete ways the photographs attest to the circulation and use of the coin, as each one depicts a nicked, scared, gouged, tarnished, and rusted surface. Often the coin's face is so mutilated that Lincoln's profile is difficult, if not impossible, to discern. The 'Copperheads' look like poisonous landscapes - aerial views of strip mines, the surface of the moon. '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.

Status

On view

Location