Siân Davey is a photographer with a background in Fine Art and Social Policy. She worked for 15 years as a humanist Buddhist psychotherapist before beginning her creative practice.
After visiting the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Tate London (2007), Davey was immediately inspired to translate her history creatively. In 2011, at the age of 48, she found her medium. The camera relinquished Davey’s psychotherapy work and committed her to the process of creativity.
Her photography work is an investigation of the psychological landscapes of both herself and those around her. Davey’s four children and her community are central to her practice. She draws upon her childhood years as a constant narrative to inform her practice.
In 2012, Davey completed an MA in Photography at Plymouth University and went on to complete an MFA the following year. Davey has since produced work about each of her children which serve as a portal to her unconscious world. In 2015, she published her first book ‘Looking for Alice’ that chronicles her daughter Alice’s early years who was born with Down's Syndrome. The series is an inquiry into how society perceives difference. In 2018, she published her second book ‘Martha’, that follows her daughter during the brief period of time where one is both a young woman and a child in the same body.
Davey has been the recipient for awards including the winner of the Arnold Newman Award for New Directions in Portraiture, Prix Virginia Woman’s Photography Award and 3 consecutive years the National Gallery Taylor Wessing Portrait Award. Her book ‘Looking for Alice’ was shortlisted for Paris Photo – Aperture Best Book Award Shortlist 2016 and shortlisted for the Kraszna – Krausz Foundation Book Award.
Davey’s work has been exhibited across the globe in a number of solo and group shows. Exhibitions include: ‘Refocus,’Aperture New York, USA (2018); Family Affairs at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2021); On Hannah Arendt, The Crisis in Education, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, UK (2021); and Images Vevey, Martha and Looking for Alice, (2022).
Davey’s work is held by major collections including The Science Museum, London; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The French National Collection, Paris; and The Martin Parr Foundation; Bristol.
