20 Facts About Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon was born on February 4,1975 and is an American multidisciplinary artist who works in photography, text, sculpture, and performance.

Currently residing and maintaining a studio practice in New York City, Simon has had work featured in the Venice Biennale.

Taryn Simon was born in New York City and attended Brown University, where she initially studied environmental studies before graduating with a degree in art semiotics.

In 2000, Taryn Simon was given an assignment by New York Times Magazine to photograph men who had been wrongfully convicted, which inspired her to explore photography's role in the criminal justice system.

Taryn Simon applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship which allowed her to travel across the United States photographing and interviewing individuals who were wrongfully convicted.

Taryn Simon photographed the subjects at sites significant to their wrongful conviction, such as the scene of the crime, misidentification, alibi, or arrest.

Black Square is an ongoing project in which Taryn Simon collects objects, documents, and individuals within a black field that has precisely the same measurements as Kazimir Malevich's 1915 suprematist work of the same name.

Taryn Simon discussed the project with photography historian Geoffrey Batchen for the 8th volume of Museo.

Brian De Palma asked Taryn Simon to take the photograph that is the last shot of his 2007 film Redacted.

De Palma and Taryn Simon discussed their work and methods in a conversation published in Artforum:.

The subjects documented by Taryn Simon include: the Zionist and Jewish establishments in Pre-Israel Palestine, feuding families in Brazil, victims of genocide in Bosnia, the body double of Saddam Hussein's son Uday, and the living dead in India.

Taryn Simon's collection is at once cohesive and arbitrary, mapping the relationships among chance, blood, and other components of fate.

Taryn Simon's work insists on a more fundamentally rational relationship to photographs, and especially to photographs of people.

Taryn Simon sees this archive as a precursor to Internet search engines.

Taryn Simon's Birds of the West Indies is a two-part work, whose title is taken from the "definitive taxonomy" of the same name by the American ornithologist James Bond.

The first element of Taryn Simon's work is a photographic inventory of the women, weapons, and vehicles of James Bond films made over the past fifty years.

Taryn Simon collects this buried history and examines the latent social, political, and economic forces pushing against power and privilege.

Taryn Simon noticed the ubiquity of floral displays at these occasions.

Taryn Simon describes mixed feelings of intrusion and empathy as he listens to the mourners' expression of inconsolable grief.

Taryn Simon has been married to director Jake Paltrow since 2010.