Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon directs our attention to the unseen forces shaping the worlds we inhabit. Her projects, using photography, sculpture, text, sound and performance, center on storytelling, secrecy, and the hidden contours of power. Simon works with institutions including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the International Commission on Missing Persons, and the Fine Arts Commission of the CIA.

Her multi-year projects include The Innocents, documenting the stories of individuals who served time in American prisons for violent crimes they did not commit; An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, examining the divide between public and expert access through hidden and unknown objects and sites in the United States; A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I – XVIII, for which Simon traveled the world recording bloodlines and their related stories; and the photographs and sculptures of Paperwork and the Will of Capital recreate the bouquets of flowers arrayed at a number of international treaty signings.

An exhibition of a new body of work by Simon is forthcoming at the Guggenheim, New York, in September, 2026.

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