Track Lap 3

Back to lectures – the two times which the crowd elicits laughter during Taryn Simon’s first Ted talk, about her bodies of work An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar & The Innocents, are at the mention of the Playboy for the Blind and the actual scale of the Death Star II. The rest of it is filled with silence and hard facts, which float around the photographs as she speaks aloud.

I wonder how guilty the audience feels when they chuckle at those moments? Did they come for the entertainment or for the insightful knowledge? Which gives the photograph its significance?

My cousin’s son, Taylor, asked me over the summer which was more important Star Wars as a movie or a documentary film about a soldier in the military? I quickly answered back with the prior and let my self-consciousness tear itself apart for the rest of the day. 

Cinema can offer a type of escape, I’m careful about blocking that door.

We always long for freedom but responsibility remains ever present...

If you Google search her name there are so many celebrity style pictures of Taryn Simon looking beautiful that it begins to shift the weight of the striking and thought provoking images she is notable for creating with Photography. I find that stunning, but perhaps it’s merely a subjective observation.

Harry Callahan – Eleanor, 1948

Sexuality is quite a peculiar issue to bring into your Artwork when you wish for it to have an authority, to be seriously considered and respected with other types of intellectual discourse. However, there are instances when a gallery owner fantasizes about an artist, a collector dreams about a model, and the publisher demands control over all of which.

Trust issues, Taryn should have elaborated the memory confusion section with that. It’s an important aspect of her work that remains unspoken, even in later lectures.

The business of subtly expressing yourself comes with a few disadvantages, I know. At times we’re lead to believe that we must simply become mirrors.