Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

Since 2003, Taryn Simon has been photographing spaces across the United States that are integral to America's foundation myths or daily functioning, but inaccessible to the public, and sometimes even unknown. Photography's fascination with secret worlds has traditionally focused on the black-market, the exotic, the disappearing or already forgotten, but Simon's photographs aren't of relics or dens of iniquity--all of her subjects are legal, condoned or even funded by the U.S. government, or are being actively contested in the American legal system. An American Index documents the quiet, well guarded halls of science, government, medicine, entertainment, security and religion. Its 70 richly detailed color plates, made with a large-format view camera, exploit photography's power to make the hidden known; and Simon's generous annotations draw attention to the reference form as a politically and artistically powerful mode of organizing knowledge and re-presenting the material world. Simon is interested in the annotated photograph's potential to engage the public in a quest for answers. In combining image and text, she challenges the divide between the specialized knowledge of experts and that of the larger public, and the divide between art and information. By making America's hidden and unfamiliar visible and intelligible, An American Index makes itself essential. Text contributions from Althea Wasow, Elisabeth Sussman and Salman Rushdie.

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.