it’s nice to see work that has a personality to it’s approach.  not only are taryn simon’s photographic trials humanely interesting, but they show her interest in the irony of life. sometimes sad, sometimes hurtful, always poking at the imperfection and impurity of being human, they bring you between compassion and appreciaton.

i’m interested to see this new big investigation called ‘a living man declared dead and other chapters’. like her past projects i  don’t think it can help but coax people to be more curious, to want to understand the background, and then to have a different perspecitive coming out the other end. I don’t know much about this new project except it was produced over a four-year period (2008-11), during which she researched and recorded bloodlines, from around the world, and their related stories. in the eighteen ‘chapters’ the external forces of territory, power, circumstance or religion collide with the internal forces of psychological and physical inheritance. it’s at the tate modern right now. might have to cross the pond sometime before it’s gone  by kl