Taryn Simon

Yet another fantastic multimedia production from Tate Shots, this piece on American photographer Taryn Simon (see Susan Bright's article in #10 of 1000 Words) focuses on her new exhibition at Tate Modern ‘A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters’. Simon mixes photography and text in a series works that chart family bloodlines. At the heart of each group of photographic portraits, carefully arranged as 18 horizontal family trees, is a compelling story. One set documents the relatives of an Iraqi man who was a body double for Saddam Hussein’s son; another show members of a religious sect in Lebanon who believe in reincarnation; while the exhibition title comes from a work about a living Indian man who was declared dead in official records. From feuding families in Brazil to victims of genocide in Bosnia, Simon forms a collection that maps the relationships between chance, blood and other components of fate.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Simon Norfolk

Following on from Val William's exclusive feature on Simon Norfolk & John Burke: Photographs From The War In Afghanistan in #11 of 1000 Words, here is a very well put together short video from Tate Shots wherein he discusses the parallels between the two bodies of work, his outspoken political opinions and his manner of seducing his audience through beauty in order to draw their attention to the real issues he is trying to represent.