Taryn Simon Boeken

In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon documents spaces that are integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal. The work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories, to see everything. Simon makes use of the annotated-photograph's capacity to engage and inform the public. Transforming that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form, she confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public. Photographed with a large format view camera (except when prohibited), Simon's 70 color plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity. In addition to this monograph, there is also an exhibition of Simon's work opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2007.

In 1936, an ornithologist called James Bond released the definitive taxonomy of birds found in the Caribbean, titled Birds of the West Indies. Ian Fleming, an active bird watcher living in Jamaica, subsequently appropriated the name for his novel's lead character. He found it to be perfectly "ordinary", "brief", "Anglo-Saxon" and "masculine". This co-opting of names was the first replacement in a series of substitutions that would become central to the construction of the Bond narrative. In a meticulous and comprehensive dissection of the Bond films, artist Taryn Simon (*1975 in New York) inventoried women, weapons and vehicles in Bond. The contents of these categories function as essential accessories to the narrative's myth of the seductive, powerful, and invincible western male. In Birds of the West Indies, Simon presents a visual database of interchangeable variables used in the production of fantasy, through which she examines the economic and emotional value generated by their repetition.Exhibition schedule: 2013 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh October 5, 2013-March 16, 2014

Exploring the organization of visual information, this work utilizes prints, postcards, and various ephemera from the New York Public Library's archive. Taryn Simon's innovative approach creates a unique experience that highlights the interplay between imagery and information, making it a remarkable achievement in bookmaking.

Taryn Simon lived in John F Kennedy International Airport from November 16 through November 20, 2009. JFK processes more international passengers than any other airport in the United States. Contraband includes photographs taken 24 hours a day of over 1000 items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad.

"Born in New York in 1975, Taryn Simon is at the forefront of contemporary photography practice. Her artistic medium is based around three equal elements: photography, text, and graphic design, which combined investigate the limitations of absolute understanding, examining the gaps between each element and how this can lead to disorientation and ambiguity. Simon's work ranges in focus and scope from a series of examinations of legal function specific to the United States: The Innocents, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, and Contraband; to a four-year examination of politics, history and individual agency on a global scale: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters; to works based on obscure and little-known stories and archives, addressing the nature of the production and circulation of knowledge: Black Square and The Picture Collection. Committed but never limited to these concerns, Simon's work has established her as a pre-eminent exponent of a practice that engages equally with issues of pressing importance in the modern world, and with the politics of representation. Published in close collaboration with the artist, this publication is the first to draw together Taryn Simon's diverse and complex range of projects, produced since 2002. With new and published essays by amongst others Salman Rushdie, Homi Bhabha, Daniel Baumann, Tim Griffin, Tina Kuklieski, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Elisabeth Sussman. With an introduction by Simon Baker, Curator of Photography at Tate Modern"--Tate Publishing

In her monograph, 'An Occupation of Loss', artist Taryn Simon creates a detailed record of her years researching professional mourning, which culminated in a seminal performance at the Park Avenue Armory in 2016. During the installation, professional mourners from around the world simultaneously broadcast their lamentations within a monumental sculptural setting, enacting rituals of grief. The installation combined performance, sound, and architecture to consider the anatomy of grief and the intricate systems we use to manage fate and uncertainty. The book leads the reader through the complicated visa application process for the mourners invited to enter the United States, revealing the underlying structures governing global exchange, the movement of bodies, and the hierarchies of art and culture.

In Paperwork and the Will of Capital, Taryn Simon (* 1975)--one of the most original and challenging conceptual artists of our time--brings together geopolitics, horticultural science, and the art of still life to investigate how the stagecraft of power is created, performed, marketed, and maintained. At signings of political accords, contracts, treaties, and decrees determining some of the gravest issues of our time, powerful men flank floral centerpieces curated to convey the importance of the signatories and represented institutions. Simon reconstituted and photographed the flower arrangements from archival images of key events; she then dried and pressed the flowers as herbarium specimens. This sumptuous book, part nature study, part metaphor, bears witness to an elaborate and intriguing process of artistic deconstruction and reconstruction.Exhibitions: Gagosian, New York 18.2.-26.3.2016 - Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow 17.3.-22.5.2016 - Tel Aviv Museum of Art 23.9.2016-28.1.2017

In 1936, an American ornithologist named James Bond published the definitive taxonomy Birds of the West Indies. Ian Fleming, an active bird-watcher living in Jamaica, appropriated the name for his novel’s lead character. He found it “flat and colourless,” a fitting choice for a character intended to be “anonymous. . . a blunt instrument in the hands of the government.” In Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies, Taryn Simon (*1975) casts herself as James Bond (1900–1989) the ornithologist, and identifies, photographs, and classifies all the birds that appear within the twenty-four films of the James Bond franchise. The appearance of many of the birds was unplanned and virtually undetected, operating as background noise for whatever set they happened to fly into. Simon’s ornithological discoveries occupy a liminal space—confined within the fiction of the James Bond universe and yet wholly separate from it. This taxonomy of 331 birds is a precise consideration of a new nature found in an alternate reality.