Taryn Simon
1975–

Taryn Simon investigates photography from within, employing the medium to probe its various uses and abuses. Her projects of the past decade, which are extensive in means and scope, have integrated photographs, text, and elements of graphic design in inventorying, among other subjects, contraband items seized by airport authorities, bloodlines that connect hundreds of people around the world, and birds in James Bond films. With a taxonomic approach, Simon plumbs the internal contradictions of the photographic medium, exploring it as a mode of both corroboration and concealment, truthtelling and obfuscation, cohesiveness and fragmentation.

The man named Larry Mayes who is featured in Simon’s 2002 work was identified by a rape victim as one of her attackers on the basis of a photograph; he was consequently imprisoned for nearly twenty years, even though no biological evidence had tied him to the crime. The work is one of fifty that comprise Simon’s early project The Innocents, for which the artist photographed men who had been convicted of violent crimes, and who were imprisoned and then later exonerated through DNA evidence. Simon learned that mistaken identification, often made through photographic images of suspects, was a frequent cause of wrongful conviction. The Innocents, as she has explained, “stresses the cost of ignoring the limitations of photography and minimizing the context in which photographic images are presented.” Each subject was photographed at a site significant to his experience; Larry Mayes, his gaze at once defiant and resigned, is posing here in the decrepit Indiana hotel room where he was arrested for a crime he did not commit.

Introduction

Taryn Simon (born February 4, 1975) is an American multidisciplinary artist who works in photography, text, sculpture, and performance.

Currently residing and maintaining a studio practice in New York City, Simon has had work featured in the Venice Biennale (2015). In 2001, Simon was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow.