Taryn Simon

The things we perceive, we also believe are true. No other organ is ascribed as much responsibility for providing evidence as the eye. At the same time, seeing is in no way unprejudiced. Perspective, knowledge, and intuition influence vision. Here, what is real and what is imaginary can hardly be distinguished. Taryn Simons's new series of photographs, The Innocents, supplies impressive proof of this. On display are people in various places, all of whom have been accused of committing violent crimes-and then condemned and imprisoned in error, based on eye witness accounts and photographs. When they return to the places where they were arrested, or where the crime was committed, where they were falsely accused, or where their alibi placed them, they themselves become witnesses. At intersections where reality has been declared fiction and the imaginary became the truth, they look questioningly into the distance, or at the camera-living proof of the alleged objectivity and ambivalence of the senses.

TARYN SIMON ( 1975, New York) is one of the best-known fine arts photographers in the world whose works have already been shown at the Biennale di Venezia and prominent museums, including the Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris. The Guggenheim grant she won in 2001 helped her to carry out The Innocents photography project.