Taryn Simon: The Picture Collection: The Picture Collection

The New York Public Library’s image archive features an astonishing 1.2 million photographs, posters and prints. The project underscores an ongoing relationship between the Cahiers d’Art and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, as the nearly 100-year old collection itself includes materials sourced from Cahiers d’Art’s revue dating back to the 1920’s. This dialogue culminates in Simon’s book, which offers an alternative history of photography. In The Picture Collection, Simon meticulously re-sorted the library’s archive, pulling out images from various categories to reveal the often arbitrary ways humans categorize images. For the monograph, Simon decided to expand the project, and photographed, in a more forensic style, over 200 documents and letters of correspondence about the operations, dramas and inner workings of the New York Public Library image archive. This publication highlights Simon’s explorations into the historic archive, will also offer a new perspective on some of the greatest 20th-century artists, as she responds to previously unseen archival material, photographs and correspondence by such artists as Diego Rivera, Lewis Hine, Paul Strand and Walker Evans. It includes an essay by Tim Griffin, former editor of Artforum magazine and current Executive Director and Chief Curator at The Kitchen, New York.