Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar
Starting Date: Saturday, 19 December 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 9 May 2010
Photographer Taryn Simon has, in this exhibition, created a collection of photographs that documents the inaccessible places that exist below the surface of American identity. It took her as long as a year to gain permission to photograph some of the high-security zones on view in this body of work, like government-regulated quarantine sites, nuclear waste storage facilities, prison death rows and C.I.A. offices.
Because her approach tends to be very direct and unsentimental, some images look like they could be museum displays, which only makes these mysterious spaces even more curious and seductive. Through her work, the strangeness of American culture shines.
Taryn Simon
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 which 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 among the most contaminated sites in the United States.
© 2007 Taryn Simon / Courtesy Steidl / Gagosian.
Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar is an Institute of Modern Art exhibition.
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