Taryn Simon

With her photographs and accompanying texts, Taryn Simon (1975, New York, United States) tries to bring some clarity to the world. Everything that she captures has in some way or another been removed from public view: often because the authorities have deliberately shielded the public from it, sometimes because no-one even knows it exists or otherwise because it has simply been overlooked. All these power structures, which we as mere mortals have no control over, exist throughout the world and furthermore are increasingly becoming globalised phenomena.

Taryn Simon’s Image Atlas, a search engine that she created with programmer Aaron Swartz, was exhibited in Global Imaginations. The work explores cultural differences and similarities by displaying the top image results for given search terms entered into local search engines throughout the world. It throws up pertinent questions such as: How neutral is data? How is visual language being changed by digital technology? How (much) does translation change the meaning? Image Atlas makes clear that in a world that is presented as increasingly uniform in a global economy, its differences continue to be immense and plentiful.

Taryn Simon lives and works in New York, United States.