Taryn Simon Quotes

• I'm designing a seductive frame to attract an audience to a subject they would otherwise ignore. And that's what I do in all of my photography - give a stage to things that wouldn't normally receive that stage.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Giving, Design

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• Photography's ability to blur truth and fiction is one of its most compelling qualities. But when misused... this ambiguity can have severe, even lethal consequences.... Photography's ambiguity, beautiful in one context, can be devastating in another.

  Taryn Simon

  Beautiful, Photography, Quality

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• There is no truth in photography. One can't reproduce an absolute truth. That said, I don't see [my photographs] as being any less truthful than any other photographs.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Truthful, Said

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• Documentary photography is becoming more illustrative as people become more familiar with photography’s limitations and vulnerabilities. Reality has always been interpreted through layers of manipulation, abstraction, and intervention. But now, it is very much on the surface. I like this honesty about its dishonesty. Every photograph has many truths and none. Photographs are ambiguous, no matter how seemingly scientific they appear to be. They are always subject to an uncontrollable context. This is a tired statement, but worth repeating.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Honesty, Tired

  Interview with Geoffrey Batchen, Nell McClister, www.museomagazine.com.

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• You come to the photograph as an aesthetic object with no context... Then you step in and read the text and then out again to revisit the image in a completely different way. I'm interested in that space between text and image. The piece becomes the negative space between the two.

  Taryn Simon

  Two, Space, Way

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• Photography threatens fantasy.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Fantasy

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• My work is drawn to the political but avoids an agenda. There is no inherent critique or support.

  Taryn Simon

  Support, Political, Agendas

  Interview with David Coggins, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 29, 2008.

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• I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.

  Taryn Simon

  Communication, Night, Space

  "Taryn Simon's Visual Babel". Interview with Lauren Cornell, www.newyorker.com. August 2, 2012.

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• Archives exist because there's something that can't necessarily be articulated. Something is said in the gaps between all the information.

  Taryn Simon

  Motivation, Inspiration, Archives

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• The photograph doesn't claim to be a participant, or to know, or to be a club member of whatever it's documenting - photography is more demanding when it doesn't pretend to know.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Clubs, Claims

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• Simulations directly relate to the process of and complications in photography. They also overtly create layers of fantasies, myths and interventions... The simulation confuses the idea of a truth. I've always been interested in this kind of theater and illusion at the foundation of belief.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Ideas, Layers

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• Photography's history is bound to the mistake, to the accident.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Mistake, Accidents

  "Blow-Up Brian De Palma & Taryn Simon in conversation". www.artforum.com. 2012.

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• I want to see everything. I guess the positive version of not seeing or not knowing would be preservation of fantasy.

  Taryn Simon

  Knowing, Would Be, Want

  "Blow-Up Brian De Palma & Taryn Simon in conversation". www.artforum.com. 2012.

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• In my work, I construct texts and images. Between those two points the blur occurs. Each is altered by the other again and again, back and forth.

  Taryn Simon

  Two, Back And Forth, Blur

  "Taryn Simon's Visual Babel". Interview with Lauren Cornell, www.newyorker.com. August 2, 2012.

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• The majority of my work is about preparation.

  Taryn Simon

  Preparation, Majority

  "Taryn Simon: the woman in the picture". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2011.

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