Taryn Simon's Genealogical Investigation at Galerie Almine Rech

Taryn Simon's series 'A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters', exhibited at Galerie Almine Rech in Paris from May 29 to July 28, 2012, is a sprawling investigation spanning four years (2008-2011). The project reconstructs genealogies of individuals whose lives intersected with historical chaos. Each chapter follows a rigid conceptual structure: a panel of portraits of family members, a vertical text panel with census data, narrative content, and photo captions, and a final panel of photographs acting as evidence. However, the system contains its own undoing. Portraits are arranged in grids that overwhelm the individual; empty images mark missing living subjects. In Chapter 7, photographs of human remains from the Srebrenica massacre interrupt the lineage. Chapter 14 presents an absurd mathematical equation for reincarnation, with Simon assigning a single birth date. Chapter 6 shifts focus to the introduction and scientific extermination of rabbits in Australia via a virus, with the portrait panel being one of the largest. The work evokes the conceptual photography of the Bechers and the science-fiction photo-novel of Chris Marker, exploring the desire to escape repetition.