Taryn Simon
Contraband
Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2010
480 pp., 24.5 x 16.5., softcover
Edition size unknown
In 2009, Taryn Simon spent five days living in John F Kennedy International Airport in New York, the airport that processes more international passengers than any other in the United States. Contraband includes photographs taken 24 hours a day of over 1000 items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad.
The items include pork, syringes, Botox, Ketamine tranquillizers, Lidocaine, Lorazepam, locust tree seed, ginger root, deer tongues, deer penis, cow urine, cow manure tooth powder, Cohiba cigars, Egyptian cigarettes, counterfeit Disney DVDs, counterfeit Louis Vuitton purses, purses made from endangered species, undeclared jewelry, steroids and an ostrich egg.
"Compared to her best-known previous project, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2004-07), which presents often moody and atmospheric images of the interiors of little-known or secret sites (including military, medical, energy, zoological) with a full paragraph of explanation, the tone of Contraband is one of studied neutrality. The items are pictured from some distance against a uniform pale background, and the captions are reduced to a category title and grounds for seizure.
[...]
Given their spare presentation, the images in Contraband are neither as theatrical nor as immediately engaging as those of An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, but they too come from a privileged, liminal location where the U.S. defines its tolerances. Thus presented, the rules determining these limits appear to be blunt instruments. Is this invasion of privacy an equitable price to pay for security? Does a distaste arise from knowing that this takes place with our tacit accord?"
- Aoife Rosenmeyer, Art in America
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