Last week, Taryn Simon gave a talk at Christiane zu Salm's About Change Collection. I was happy to go there, since Taryn spoke at DLD08 and it was good seeing her again. She showed two series of her work: American Index and The Innocents (Taryn is a highly relevant new photoartists introduced to us by Hans-Ulrich Obrist look her bio and profile here).
The image above belongs to the American Indes series. It shows the only legal canabis lab in the US. On her website you see more of these examples of unknown and hidden places of reality we don't know. To me this is very strong. Even more so, the prior series on convicted innocent people who she portraited at the crime scenes the never have been. The stories of these people make you think a lot. Often it is, as she explained, due to false photo identification they are sent to prison for years. Then DNA tests brought them back to life. So the unvisual overcomes the visual. It is part of the change of our times. I would like to keep tuned on her future projects.
