Taryn Simon Quotes

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

Taryn Simon

#2. 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

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

Taryn Simon

#4. The majority of my work is about preparation.

Taryn Simon

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

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

Taryn Simon

#9. 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

#10. I do seem to try to make things harder and harder for myself. In some perverse way, obstacles interest me and I'm drawn to projects that end up being incredibly laborious.

Taryn Simon

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

Taryn Simon

#12. 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

#13. 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