Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

I moved into NYC last Monday for an upcoming internship which starts tomorrow. Taking advantage of my new surroundings I visited many of the cities museums. The Met, Frick Collection, and most entertaining and visually stimulating the Whitney Museum.

One exhibition currently being displayed at the Whitney is Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (the link brings you to a site which has some of her pictures). The exhibit was a room housing about 15 photographs like the one featured here on the left. Some of the photographs contained easily identifiable objects but you did not know why Simon took that picture, like the Playboy cover on the left. Others leave the viewer unable to fulfill there confused state. This Playboy magazine picture was not the one used in the exhibit but it is close. Simon's Playboy's cover was much clearer and the magazine's cover was flat on the portrait, as if the cover was against the glass frame.

Simon attaches a small paragraph with each picture which makes everything clear. I could not find her exact words attached to this image but I tried to remember somewhat of how it went, with my own slant of course.

This is Playboy for the blind, Braille Playboy. It is distributed by the Library of Congress. Playboy magazine contains articles by Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Clancy and interviews with Bob Dylan, Bill Gates, and Kevin Spacey.

I found this picture to be the most amusing but not all of her works is amusing, most of it is not.

The exhibit was extremely powerful and moving. When you view some of the other works (by following the link up top) it is evident that she is a gifted artist with the gift for creating messages with strong meanings.