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An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar
“I am always immensely grateful to people who do impossible things on my behalf and bring back the picture. It means I don’t have to do it, but at least I know what it looks like.” This is what Salman Rushdie wrote about artist Taryn Simon in his essay in this volume. And, in fact, in her famous series of works, which she finished in 2007, Simon (*1975) does indeed show the hidden, the forbidden and inaccessible within American borders.
She reveals what lies concealed beneath the surface of America's mythology and daily functioning. After conducting painstaking negotiations, she uses her large-format camera to capture what is usually only reserved for the initiated: containers of radioactive nuclear waste, the CIA’s art collection, the outdoor facility of a “body farm,” or the inside of a hibernating bear’s cave. The artist annotates each of her almost sixty pictures with descriptive texts highlighting the complexities of both her subjects and the relationship between text and image.
She reveals what lies concealed beneath the surface of America's mythology and daily functioning. After conducting painstaking negotiations, she uses her large-format camera to capture what is usually only reserved for the initiated: containers of radioactive nuclear waste, the CIA’s art collection, the outdoor facility of a “body farm,” or the inside of a hibernating bear’s cave. The artist annotates each of her almost sixty pictures with descriptive texts highlighting the complexities of both her subjects and the relationship between text and image.
152 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2007
2 people are currently reading
181 people want to read
About the author
Taryn Simon
16 books3 followersTaryn Simon’s practice features rigorous research and an extensive engagement with archives, which help the artist explore systems of power. Her subjects have included bloodlines, the structure of the criminal justice system, and flower arrangements from photographs of political signings. Simon explores these interests in taxonomic photographs, text works, sculptures, films, and performances that critique long-standing institutions and the ways art has supported them.
The Innocents (2002), for example, documents wrongful conviction cases in the United States and considers how photography and mistaken identification can undermine criminal justice efforts. For An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), Simon photographed traditionally out-of-sight objects and spaces—from a braille edition of Playboy to the CIA’s art collection—that she believed to be foundational to American mythologies.
Simon’s work belongs in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate.
The Innocents (2002), for example, documents wrongful conviction cases in the United States and considers how photography and mistaken identification can undermine criminal justice efforts. For An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), Simon photographed traditionally out-of-sight objects and spaces—from a braille edition of Playboy to the CIA’s art collection—that she believed to be foundational to American mythologies.
Simon’s work belongs in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 15, 2016
Eisnein's No.28 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.29 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
Another stellar release from publisher Hatje Cantz, this time a long awaited reprinting of Taryn Simon's seminal, critically lauded work, 'An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar'.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Contraband Room; John F. Kennedy International Airport; Queens, New York
"African cane rats infested with maggots, African yams (dioscorea), Andean potatoes, Bangladeshi cucurbit plants, bush meat, cherimoya fruit, curry leaves (murraya), dried orange peels, fresh eggs, giant African snail, impala skull cap, jackfruit seeds, June plum, kola nuts, mango, okra, passion fruit, pig nose, pig mouths, pork, raw poultry (chicken), South American pig head, South American tree tomatoes, South Asian lime infected with citrus canker, sugar cane (poaceae), uncooked meats, unidentified sub tropical plant in soil."
Though I'm not as attracted to art photography (or the slew of not-so-artistic photography monographs featuring volcanoes, celebrities, dogs, cats, tropical fishes, semi-nude semi-celebrities in black & white, etc.) as I am painting or sculpture, when I first read about Simon and her book it grabbed me by the collar and gave me a shake. This is the kind of photography I like -- clear, ambitious but unpretentious, with a well-communicated and intriguing mission statement. Her newest book, Birds of the West Indies, is a very different beast... but never mind that.
Hymenoplasty; Cosmetic Surgery, P.A.; Fort Lauderdale, Florida
"The patient in this photograph is 21 years old. She is of Palestinian descent and living in the United States. In order to adhere to cultural and familial expectations regarding her virginity and marriage, she underwent hymenoplasty. Without it she feared she would be rejected by her future husband and bring shame upon her family. She flew in secret to Florida where the operation was performed by Dr. Bernard Stern, a plastic surgeon she located on the internet.
The purpose of hymenoplasty is to reconstruct a ruptured hymen, the membrane which partially covers the opening of the vagina. It is an outpatient procedure which takes approximately 30 minutes and can be done under local or intravenous anesthesia.
The hymen has not been proven to serve any biological function. Some girls are born with an imperforate hymen. Rupture most often occurs during first intercourse, but some girls tear their hymen during sports activities or as a result of injuries. The majority of the time there is a correlation between an intact hymen and a woman’s virginity; many cultures view the tearing of the hymen as a critical symbol of that loss. While similar attempts to alter the hymen predate modern plastic surgery, hymenoplasty is now just one of several vaginal cosmetic surgeries that are growing in popularity worldwide. Dr. Stern charges $3,500 for hymenoplasty. He also performs labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation."
Simon is concerned with secrets, the bigger the better. Inside C.I.A. headquarters, to a nuclear-waste holding facility where the water-submerged barrels give off an ominous blue argon glow, and then off to the seedy meeting hall of the KKK... Simon has a very good eye, but an even better mind. The range of subjects in itself is impressive, moreso because she managed to talk her camera in, and OUT, of these occasionally dangerous places.
Dynamo III; Studying Magnetic Fields and Impending Pole Reversal
The Central Intelligence Agency, Art; CIA Original Headquarters; Building; Langley, Virginia
"The Fine Arts Commission of the CIA is responsible for acquiring art to display in the Agency’s buildings. Among the Commission’s curated art are two pieces (pictured) by Thomas Downing, on long-term loan from the Vincent Melzac collection. Downing was a member of the Washington Color School, a group of post World War II painters whose influence helped to establish the city as a center for arts and culture. Vincent Melzac was a private collector of abstract art and the Administrative Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.’s premiere art museum. Among Melzac’s many contributions to the CIA is a bronze bust of President George H.W. Bush, sculpted by Marc Mellon, and located in the Original Headquarters Building.
Since the founding of the CIA in 1947, the Agency has participated in both covert and public cultural diplomacy efforts throughout the world. It is speculated that some of the CIA’s involvement in the arts was designed to counter Soviet Communism by helping to popularize what it considered pro-American thought and aesthetic sensibilities. One well documented example of their cultural involvement was the 1967 exposure of CIA funding, through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, of Encounter Magazine, a well respected outlet for US and European intellectuals. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, established in 1950, sponsored numerous journals, conferences of western intellectuals, art exhibits and books. Such involvement in cultural diplomacy and CIA sponsorship has raised historical questions about certain art forms or styles that may have elicited the interest of the Agency, including abstract expressionism."
The book itself is immaculately designed and produced, with a charcoal grey clothblound cover and tastefully restrained gilt-embossed titles. Simon gives her book the restrained, minimal elegance of some vital but secretive government document, almost bureaucratic in it's simplicity. As with all Hatje Cantz titles, the paper is of the highest quality, an arctic-white semi-gloss archival stock. It's larger than the average monograph, about 10.25in W x 13.5in H, and 160pp.
Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility; Cherenkov Radiation, Hanford Site; U.S. Department of Energy, Southeastern Washington State
"Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless steel nuclear waste capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect or Cherenkov radiation. The Cherenkov Effect describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds.
Hanford is a 586 square mile former plutonium production complex. It was built for the Manhattan Project, the U.S.-led World War II defense effort that developed the first nuclear weapons. Hanford plutonium was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. For decades afterwards Hanford manufactured nuclear materials for use in bombs. At Hanford there are more than 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous liquid waste, 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel, nearly 18 metric tons of plutonium-bearing materials and about 80 square miles of contaminated groundwater. It is among the most contaminated sites in the United States."
If you're a photography aficionado, I'd say this is essential; if you're someone who's fascinated by the secrets that America once conspired and killed to keep, and perhaps you've got some artistic predilections, you might like it, too... if you can make peace with the price-tag.
All excerpts are from Taryn Simon's website. Please don't sue me Taryn, I come in peace. A touch of occasional war, but mostly peace.
Eisnein's No.28 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.29 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
More Art-book Reviews
More Comic-book Reviews
More Novel Reviews
Another stellar release from publisher Hatje Cantz, this time a long awaited reprinting of Taryn Simon's seminal, critically lauded work, 'An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar'.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Contraband Room; John F. Kennedy International Airport; Queens, New York
"African cane rats infested with maggots, African yams (dioscorea), Andean potatoes, Bangladeshi cucurbit plants, bush meat, cherimoya fruit, curry leaves (murraya), dried orange peels, fresh eggs, giant African snail, impala skull cap, jackfruit seeds, June plum, kola nuts, mango, okra, passion fruit, pig nose, pig mouths, pork, raw poultry (chicken), South American pig head, South American tree tomatoes, South Asian lime infected with citrus canker, sugar cane (poaceae), uncooked meats, unidentified sub tropical plant in soil."
Though I'm not as attracted to art photography (or the slew of not-so-artistic photography monographs featuring volcanoes, celebrities, dogs, cats, tropical fishes, semi-nude semi-celebrities in black & white, etc.) as I am painting or sculpture, when I first read about Simon and her book it grabbed me by the collar and gave me a shake. This is the kind of photography I like -- clear, ambitious but unpretentious, with a well-communicated and intriguing mission statement. Her newest book, Birds of the West Indies, is a very different beast... but never mind that.
Hymenoplasty; Cosmetic Surgery, P.A.; Fort Lauderdale, Florida
"The patient in this photograph is 21 years old. She is of Palestinian descent and living in the United States. In order to adhere to cultural and familial expectations regarding her virginity and marriage, she underwent hymenoplasty. Without it she feared she would be rejected by her future husband and bring shame upon her family. She flew in secret to Florida where the operation was performed by Dr. Bernard Stern, a plastic surgeon she located on the internet.
The purpose of hymenoplasty is to reconstruct a ruptured hymen, the membrane which partially covers the opening of the vagina. It is an outpatient procedure which takes approximately 30 minutes and can be done under local or intravenous anesthesia.
The hymen has not been proven to serve any biological function. Some girls are born with an imperforate hymen. Rupture most often occurs during first intercourse, but some girls tear their hymen during sports activities or as a result of injuries. The majority of the time there is a correlation between an intact hymen and a woman’s virginity; many cultures view the tearing of the hymen as a critical symbol of that loss. While similar attempts to alter the hymen predate modern plastic surgery, hymenoplasty is now just one of several vaginal cosmetic surgeries that are growing in popularity worldwide. Dr. Stern charges $3,500 for hymenoplasty. He also performs labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation."
Simon is concerned with secrets, the bigger the better. Inside C.I.A. headquarters, to a nuclear-waste holding facility where the water-submerged barrels give off an ominous blue argon glow, and then off to the seedy meeting hall of the KKK... Simon has a very good eye, but an even better mind. The range of subjects in itself is impressive, moreso because she managed to talk her camera in, and OUT, of these occasionally dangerous places.
Dynamo III; Studying Magnetic Fields and Impending Pole Reversal
The Central Intelligence Agency, Art; CIA Original Headquarters; Building; Langley, Virginia
"The Fine Arts Commission of the CIA is responsible for acquiring art to display in the Agency’s buildings. Among the Commission’s curated art are two pieces (pictured) by Thomas Downing, on long-term loan from the Vincent Melzac collection. Downing was a member of the Washington Color School, a group of post World War II painters whose influence helped to establish the city as a center for arts and culture. Vincent Melzac was a private collector of abstract art and the Administrative Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.’s premiere art museum. Among Melzac’s many contributions to the CIA is a bronze bust of President George H.W. Bush, sculpted by Marc Mellon, and located in the Original Headquarters Building.
Since the founding of the CIA in 1947, the Agency has participated in both covert and public cultural diplomacy efforts throughout the world. It is speculated that some of the CIA’s involvement in the arts was designed to counter Soviet Communism by helping to popularize what it considered pro-American thought and aesthetic sensibilities. One well documented example of their cultural involvement was the 1967 exposure of CIA funding, through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, of Encounter Magazine, a well respected outlet for US and European intellectuals. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, established in 1950, sponsored numerous journals, conferences of western intellectuals, art exhibits and books. Such involvement in cultural diplomacy and CIA sponsorship has raised historical questions about certain art forms or styles that may have elicited the interest of the Agency, including abstract expressionism."
The book itself is immaculately designed and produced, with a charcoal grey clothblound cover and tastefully restrained gilt-embossed titles. Simon gives her book the restrained, minimal elegance of some vital but secretive government document, almost bureaucratic in it's simplicity. As with all Hatje Cantz titles, the paper is of the highest quality, an arctic-white semi-gloss archival stock. It's larger than the average monograph, about 10.25in W x 13.5in H, and 160pp.
Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility; Cherenkov Radiation, Hanford Site; U.S. Department of Energy, Southeastern Washington State
"Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless steel nuclear waste capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect or Cherenkov radiation. The Cherenkov Effect describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds.
Hanford is a 586 square mile former plutonium production complex. It was built for the Manhattan Project, the U.S.-led World War II defense effort that developed the first nuclear weapons. Hanford plutonium was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. For decades afterwards Hanford manufactured nuclear materials for use in bombs. At Hanford there are more than 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous liquid waste, 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel, nearly 18 metric tons of plutonium-bearing materials and about 80 square miles of contaminated groundwater. It is among the most contaminated sites in the United States."
If you're a photography aficionado, I'd say this is essential; if you're someone who's fascinated by the secrets that America once conspired and killed to keep, and perhaps you've got some artistic predilections, you might like it, too... if you can make peace with the price-tag.
All excerpts are from Taryn Simon's website. Please don't sue me Taryn, I come in peace. A touch of occasional war, but mostly peace.
Eisnein's No.28 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.29 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
More Art-book Reviews
More Comic-book Reviews
More Novel Reviews
November 16, 2016
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar was exactly what it promised it was going to be. I was thoroughly impressed by some of the shots, the locations, and the stories. I didn't love Simon's composition or editing though: it was very 2006, with too many underexposed sections and sometimes not enough framing for me to enjoy it. Overall, an 8/10, a book I can definitely reference when trying to write about Weird America.
September 14, 2007
This book is ridiculously awesome. I almost stole it from a friend of mine. The mentally retarded white tiger haunts me still.
September 1, 2025
Fascinating concept and great execution. The photos themselves are not my favorite, but they're great documentary pieces for bringing to light "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar." Very cool.
November 25, 2021
This felt like uncompleted short stories. You aren't certain how Simon came to the information for her to decide to take the photograph. There are a lot of questions. Maybe this is the point?
March 20, 2024
I am always immensely grateful to people who do impossible things on my behalf and bring back the picture. It means I don't have to do it, but at least I know what it looks like.
It's always exciting to get glimpses of places you'd usually not get to see. Be it the liminal spaces in remote areas or the places certain authorities don't want the layman to enter.
Taryn Simon's photography captures those places well and makes for an engaging collection of fascinating and sometimes transgressive peeks into exclusive spaces.
December 29, 2012
This is the book I stuck in the faces of my library co-workers every time I turned a page, it was so mouth-gapingly awesome. The book dives under the surface of society with images of, for example, decomposing bodies and radioactive waste, deadly viruses and an outdoor recreation area for death-row inmates. The result is an all-access pass into America's best-kept secrets. In addition to this monograph, there is also an exhibition of Simon's work opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2007. It's a 700 some odd dollar book so check it out from your library. Two editions published so far. From the book: "In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar," Taryn Simon documents spaces that are integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal. The work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories, to see everything. Simon makes use of the annotated-photograph's capacity to engage and inform the public. Transforming that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form, she confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public. Photographed with a large format view camera (except when prohibited), Simon's 70 color plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity.
April 30, 2012
When I got to the Great White Shark in Captivity -- the only shark photo ever taken where we, potential prey, can be consumed by pity for our hunter -- I knew this Taryn Simon was something else. The photo's caption ("It developed visible nose injuries from bumping into the glass walls of the Outer Bay and killed two other sharks") is typical of this work, where descriptive NPV objectivity jostles the obvious emotional resonance of a well-composed photograph.
Other pics here include the Alhurra TV (i.e. our Voice of America successor, in Arabic) studio, a nuclear submarine mission control center, a skinned scimitar-horned oryx at a Texas exotic-game hunting ranch, braille Playboy mag, hymenoplasty surgery, endpoint of the transatlantic cable.
The photos are grand and stagey, colors subdued and clinical, with a fascinating paragraph or three describing the situation without fear or favor. The overall effect: American power is weird; most people are unaware of its weird tools and spaces; and (worst) creepy shit can be neutralized with aesthetics. This last point is made very clear when she photographs the crappy Thomas Downing paintings adorning the CIA headquarters. Please find this book and read it.
Other pics here include the Alhurra TV (i.e. our Voice of America successor, in Arabic) studio, a nuclear submarine mission control center, a skinned scimitar-horned oryx at a Texas exotic-game hunting ranch, braille Playboy mag, hymenoplasty surgery, endpoint of the transatlantic cable.
The photos are grand and stagey, colors subdued and clinical, with a fascinating paragraph or three describing the situation without fear or favor. The overall effect: American power is weird; most people are unaware of its weird tools and spaces; and (worst) creepy shit can be neutralized with aesthetics. This last point is made very clear when she photographs the crappy Thomas Downing paintings adorning the CIA headquarters. Please find this book and read it.
January 14, 2008
When I was in Frankfurt in late September, I went to the Museum für Moderne Kunst and happened to catch the opening of Taryn Simon’s An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar. I was blown away. Simon’s photography is both stunning in its asthetics and astounding in its subjects. Moreover, the irony of having to travel to Germany to get a glimpse of a young and powerful artist exposing the unseeable in American culture and society was not lost on me. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but I knew of Simon’s earlier work from a New Yorker article about her book The Innocents, whose subjects have been accused and convicted of crimes they did not commit, often photographing them at the site of the crime. Simon’s work is smart beyond her years; each piece carries with it its full semantics and rattling insight into the pathology of everyday American life, and yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
December 20, 2008
These photos are fascinating-- she got access to fascinating places and photographed them in ways that are both beautiful and shocking. The photos are slightly small, but I don't mind it because I think the description underneath is useful and in this case 100% needed.
A good pick for anyone who likes to sneak into places they aren't supposed to be, enjoys factory tours, or likes seeing the "man behind the curtain."
A good pick for anyone who likes to sneak into places they aren't supposed to be, enjoys factory tours, or likes seeing the "man behind the curtain."
August 10, 2012
This book is unique because not only is it a beautiful Photo Book, it is also an intriguing and very informative look at many little-known worlds within our larger American world. It is formatted very interestingly for a Photo Book, with a photograph and a large paragraph of information about the photographed subject or place for each page. It's very refreshing to experience this book after seeing so many Photo Books with no text at all.
October 20, 2014
"Ours is an age of secrets," from Rushdie's foreword, sounds like a noble platitude but isn't the right way to describe it. "The forbidden is one of us," might be better. It is exciting and banal at the same time. It is right here and right there. It is both dark and light, an exposure that develops next to us like a amicable phantom. Like Snyder wrote in "How Poetry Comes to Me": "I go to meet it at the/Edge of the light."
Want to read
July 7, 2007Pictures of science facilities, including avian quarantine room at animal import facility, decomposing corpse on grounds of forensic research center, flask of live HIV.
"profoundly unsettling vision of America and its potentially precarious future."
Awesome.
SEED review.
"profoundly unsettling vision of America and its potentially precarious future."
Awesome.
SEED review.
July 1, 2009
Concept, execution, storytelling, and sequencing are all top notch. A landscape format or more square format book with larger images would have been preferred. Still, a minor quibble regarding a fascinating, important body of work.
September 25, 2014
A little disappointing because of the photo quality and lack of content you wouldn't already see in her TED talk. And some of this stuff isn't really that bizarre anyway. If you can get a good deal on it or if your local library has it then it's at least worth looking at.
July 15, 2007
Photography with narrative-- hidden & unfamiliar? Secret! The stories behind these incredible photos reveal secrets about American culture we don't know or try hard to ignore.
February 5, 2008
Images, brilliant
But made so small, some power lost
Talk catalyst, true
But made so small, some power lost
Talk catalyst, true
June 26, 2008
This is one of my favorite photo books of all time. Combines two of my favorite things. Strange and hidden places and photography.
November 18, 2009
strange and fascinating! Photos of the unexepected and the hidden with short descriptions. I am amazed by how she gained access to these places!
January 19, 2011
AMAZING. Taryn Simon is one of my very favorite photographers. She is bold, innovative, creative, and has heart, which is reflected in all her photos.
November 29, 2007
Must get. Must. :)
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews