Lot 113: TARYN SIMON (B. 1975)

TARYN SIMON (B. 1975)
Larry Mayes, Scene of arrest, The Royal Inn, Gary, Indiana, Police found Mayes hiding beneath a mattress in this room, Served 18.5 years of an 80-year sentence for Rape, Robbery and Unlawful Deviate Conduct, 2002
chromogenic print, flush-mounted on aluminum
credit, title, date and number '2 of 5' on a gallery label affixed (on the reverse of the flush-mount)
31 x 40in. (79.2 x 102cm.)

Simon, The Innocents, Umbrage, 2003, p. 71

In 1993, leading civil rights attorneys Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck founded The Innocence Project in order to free those falsely convicted through the use of DNA evidence, and transform the flawed American justice system in doing so.

After spending the summer of 2000 photographing wrongly convicted and imprisoned citizens for The New York Time Magazine, Taryn Simon began investigating the unique role of photography in these devastating scenarios. She traveled the United States interviewing and photographing many of those exonerated and subsequently released after serving years in prison. Her photographs of these innocents, often set in critically important venues such as crime scenes and alibi locations, draw attention to the tenuous relationship between truth and fiction.

Photography has played a harsh role in the lives of these traumatized souls; mug shots and photo arrays account for a staggering number of mistaken identifications ultimately resulting in false convictions. Simon's photographs provide a bleak visual account of this incredible injustice, which has granted her international acclaim. After being nominated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon was the recipient of the 2010 Discovery Award at Les Rencontres D'Arles for her series, The Innocents.