Photography's intertextuality.

TARYN SIMON: AN AMERICAN INDEX OF THE HIDDEN AND UNFAMILIAR

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

NEW YORK CITY

MARCH 9-JUNE 24, 2007

Although the indexical power of photography has been greatly undermined by the current widespread use of digital image manipulation, it still remains one of the key elements that lures photographers and viewers into the medium. In 2002, Taryn Simon tested the indexical nature of photography when, in her documentary project, "The Innocents," she portrayed people wrongfully convicted of crimes after their photographs were erroneously identified as those of the perpetrators. Each case presented a shocking revelation about their victimization at the hands of the United States judiciary system, which stood firmly by its so-called "photographic evidence" until it was disproved by the admission of DNA evidence in court. With the exhibition "Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Simon turns our attention to the intertextuality of her work, while she once again explores the question of "the index" through her documentation of oddities found throughout the U.S.

What was most noticeable upon entering the glass door of the Whitney's mezzanine gallery is that the lights were turned up unusually bright for a photography exhibition. The initial moment of awe quickly wore off but gave way to an audience that is unusually still for a museum more often filled with constant pedestrian traffic. Both of these peculiarities can be attributed to the long wall texts that accompanied the seventeen photographs on exhibit. Although didactic wall texts are not unusual in museums, it is rare for the majority of the audience to be focused on them. Normally, many museum-goers skip them to avoid the heavy human traffic and artistic dictation; however, not in this case. Simon's work explores intertextuality through the use of literary documentation as an extension of the photographic medium, enhancing its documentary value.

The work addresses a wide range of subjects that include a marijuana research center, a government-regulated quarantine site, and a hymenoplasty cosmetic surgery. They reflect Simon's interest in issues of gripping sociopolitical importance. However, while the title claims that the body of work is an index, Simon does not simply turn her photographs into flat documents. She challenges the indexical value of her photographs by suppressing events or narratives in them, letting them unfold when the photographs are joined by the text. These texts are products of year-long investigations and studies of her subjects. Most of the seventeen images on view lack the events that we often look for in photographs such as events or drama; some are very abstract, even uncanny. Yet the texts reveal intensely complex issues selected by the artist such as physician-assisted suicide and nuclear waste storage. After reading them, the abstract and uncanny qualities of the photographs allow the viewers to pursue what is at stake with these issues. This work makes us explore our own values about the multifaceted dimensions of these hidden and unfamiliar phenomena.

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The effect of this intertextuality is exemplified in one of the most visually abstract photographs in the exhibition, representing an issue of unexpected complexity. What at first looks like a photograph of a contemporary light installation or the decor of a hip nightclub turns out to be 1,936 stainless-steel nuclear-waste capsules submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site, U.S. Department of Energy in Benton County, Washington. Surprisingly, we learn that the facility portrayed was built for the Manhattan Project, the U.S.'s World War II defense effort that developed the first nuclear weapons. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. Interestingly, the index here no longer remains American but becomes transnational. Another photograph is of a room at U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Displayed in the photograph are confiscated items from passengers. Plants from Bangladesh and a pig's head from South America peek out from the pile. The photograph and its text invoke the absent bodies in the photograph--the comings and goings of the people who must have carried these items, their faces, their stories, which soon become our faces and our stories in this complex time and place in which we live.

JUNG JOON LEE is an art historian and critic in New York City.