In Conversation: Taryn Simon and Lisa Hostetler

Aperture Foundation and the photography program at the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design are pleased to present a conversation between artist Taryn Simon and Lisa Hostetler, McEvoy Family Curator of Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Writing on Simon’s work, Hostetler has observed: “By highlighting the precarious and often unreliable seams between photographic imagery, textual material, and definitive knowledge, Simon’s art draws attention to habits of inference and judgment . . . . While her seductively beautiful photographs attract the eye, the accompanying texts disclose unexpected—sometimes shocking—details about the subject of the picture. Given a contemporary world rife with images and information, her work speaks to issues that affect us all.” Simon is known for several bodies of work that deploy the language and appearance of classification in support of sites of disorientation, including The Innocents (2003), Nonfiction (2006) An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), Contraband (2010) and, most recently, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I – XVIII (2011), which was exhibited last spring at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Simon’s photographs and writing have been the subject of monographic exhibitions at institutions including Tate Modern, London (2011); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2011); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2008); Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2004); and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2003; now MoMA/PS1). Among the museums that hold her work in their permanent collections are the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2011, her work was included in the 54th Venice Biennale.

Image: © Taryn Simon