Taryn Simon
[Photographer, b. 1975, New York, lives in New York.]

 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. 
 There are multiple truths attached to every image. 
 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. 
 ...photography’s history is bound to the mistake, to the accident. 
 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. 
 I want to see everything. I guess the positive version of not seeing or not knowing would be preservation of fantasy. 
 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. 
 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. 
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