Taryn Simon - For Pellegrini

Taryn Simon was born in New York in 1975. She is a graduate of Brown University and a Guggenheim Fellow. An exhibition of her most recent series of photographs, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2007. The exhibition will travel to the Museum für Modern Kunst, Frankfurt in September 2007. For this project, Simon assumes the dual role of shrewd informant and collector of curiosities, compiling an inventory of what lies hidden and out-of-view within the borders of the United States. She examines a culture through careful documentation of diverse subjects from across the realms of science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security, and religion. Transforming the unknown into a seductive and intelligible form, Simon confronts the divide between those with and without the privilege of access. Her sometimes ethereal, sometimes foreboding compositions, shot with a large-format view camera whenever conditions allowed, vary as much as her subject matter, which ranges from radioactive capsules at a nuclear waste storage facility to a black bear in hibernation. Offering visions of the unseen, the photographs of An American Index capture the strange magic at the foundation of a national identity.



Simon's previous endeavors have been received with high acclaim. Her most influential work, The Innocents, documents cases of wrongful conviction in the United States and investigates photography's role in that process. Simon's photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; and Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Permanent collections include: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her photography and writing have been featured in numerous publications and broadcasts including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, CNN, BBC, Frontline, and NPR.


Interview