Artist Taryn Simon\'s international reputation preceded her exhibition of chromogenic prints in the Milwaukee Art Museum\'s new exhbition “Photographs and Texts.” Curator of Photographs for the Museum, Lisa Hostetler, who worked with Simon on this exceptional series, then explained, “I could hardly wait to see it installed…This was really exciting to see how the three exhibits related to each other.”
“The exhibition questions what we see in a photograph,” Hostetler continues. “Slows us down and makes us think.” The viewer discovers a disquieting invitation to think during Simon\'s first series, “The Innocents.” Portraits in this exhibition depict people who were accused of violent crimes, served a partial prison sentence and then were acquitted by DNA evidence.
Each subject was photographed in a setting that relates to the crime they were convicted of, yet were actually innocent of committing. Mistakenly identified by a composite drawing or image and a photo from a mug shot, Simon questions the validity of using the photograph in the justice system and the victim\'s memory. How accurate can one be (although need to be because lives are at stake) under these horrifying circumstances?
Simon\'s portraits represent individuals and the years served but wasted in prison. Larry Mayes spent 18.5 years of an 80-year sentence until he was acquitted, knowing he was innocent, and unable to do anything about his fate. Photographic mistakes in the justice system potentially destroy and waste lives. What use are photographs in these critically defining situations?
The second series, “An American Index of the Hidden & Unfamiliar” found Simon requesting access to clandestine geographical places and buildings the general public would be unaware of, or in fact, might not ever want to know about. Simon\'s artistic eye uncovers a complex and stark aesthetic in these images that represent perturbing realities in a turbulent society.
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An interesting glass bottle with unusual markings occupies the center focus in one print and catches the eye. An antique or collector\'s item from an old pharmacy? Move in closer and the viewer reads in the text that the bottle holds the live HIV virus taken from a Harvard Medical School Research Laboratory. A new infection still occurs every ten seconds.
Nuclear waste, a field of marijuana and a pharmaceutical yew tree in a rainforest appear amazingly beautiful through Simon\'s camera lens. Reading about the images explore the veiled depths to their meaning. What does one actually infer and know from only a visual image. How many assumptions and mistakes are made each day?
Part three in the series, “Contraband” departs from Simon\'s format by displaying over 1000 items that were confiscated by the United States Customs Department within a five day period at New York\'s J.F K. International Airport. Photos observed under Lucite cases, each item in the print reflects a specimen---counterfeit, illegal, illicit or prohibited from entering the country. Simon\'s photographic documentation again questions that while the actual item or material was refused entry, an image crossed the boundary, the lint. These virtual realities can supersede any known physical limitations, limits that are challenged in videos and games every minute through phones and IPads. Perhaps so they might eventually become indistinguishable in the mind. Only one of the multilayered concepts Simon toys with in her contraband themed series.
What is visual truth? How can one accurately determine it? Who is interpreting the image that one sees? Simon\'s “ Photographs and Texts” will confound what one perceives as visual reality and how that will be experienced. Hostetler believes the exhibition, “Questions the transparency in what we are seeing and its true interpretation.”
(Visit the MAM website for further programming relating to TARYN SIMON Photographs and Texts at www.mam.org. The exhibition continues through January 1, 2012.)
