The Phantom Sex

The Phantom Sex is the catalogue for Dana Hoey's survey exhibition at the University Art Museum, University at Albany, which ran from 5 October to 8 December 2012 and drew on work she had made since the 1990s.

The softcover book carries 82 colour images, an introduction by Corinna Ripps Schaming and an essay by Johanna Burton. The museum's exhibition page describes Hoey as having examined what it means to be female for more than 20 years through staged and directed photography. She began by photographing friends in a narrative manner, often around female aggression and competitiveness, then widened the work to include older women and ordinary female activities treated as significant. Her newest pictures at the time of the show kept threads of that narrative work while turning more inward, according to the museum.

Hoey was born in San Francisco in 1966 and lives in the Hudson Valley. She studied philosophy at Wesleyan University and photography at the Yale University School of Art. Her work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Her solo shows include the Hirshhorn in 2000 and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2017.