Taryn Simon is very good at what she does. Whether it be posed objects, portraiture or snapshots of nature, her photographs satisfy a primal urge for composition and continuity, the absurd and the melancholy.
In this particular series she undertook the measured task of photographing over a thousand objects confiscated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Illegal firearms, undeclared horse-meat sausages, pirated TV shows, Chinese Viagra, and any other object deemed too tainted to cross America's hallowed perimeter. It's like a smuggler's birthday party just after the piñata got smashed; luckily Taryn was around to politely arrange, frame and shoot the aftermath. Her month long stint at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York yielded this brilliant series, titled Contraband.
It would be wrong to try and cover all of her work here so I'll leave you with these; but her other projects are equally fascinating and include studies of the wrongfully imprisoned, Fidel Castro, and meditations on the nature of kinship.
view her work here.
via It's Nice That.
all images © Taryn Simon
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