Taryn Simon / Photographs and Texts

MULTIMEDIA ART MUSEUM, MOSCOW

MILWAKEE ART MUSEUM

HELSINKI ART MUSEUM

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

present

Taryn Simon. Photographs and Texts

Taryn Simon’s ambitious works are the result of a long process of research and investigation. Her photographs and writings underscore the invisible space between language and the visual world—a space in which translation and disorientation continually occur. The personal exhibition in MAMM is a collection of works from Simon’s major projects from 2002 to 2010.

The Innocents (2002) questions photography’s function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice through portraits of individuals who were convicted of violent crimes they did not commit. Nonfiction (2003–05) consists of images depicting political and religious leaders, citizens and landscapes in territories such as Cuba, Lebanon, Indonesia, and Israel. An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007) comprises photographs and texts revealing objects and sites that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology, or daily functioning but remain inaccessible or unknown to the public. The fourth body of work, Contraband (2010), consists of 1,075 images depicting items detained or seized from passengers entering the United States from abroad over a five-day period, indexed and installed according to their official classification.

By drawing attention to the complex relationship between visual and verbal detail, these series underscore habits of inference and judgment. As the operation of civil institutions and the circulation of information become increasingly image-dependent, the concepts of access, knowledge, interpretation, and truth are frequently conflated. Simon’s art acknowledges this, and the fallacy of comprehension that photographs invite.