Taryn Simon: The Picture Collection - The Picture Collection (Paperback)

The New York Public Library s image archive features an astonishing accumulation of 1.2 million photographs, posters, and prints. Taryn Simon meticulously re-sorted the library s archive, pulling out images from various categories to reveal the subjective and often arbitrary ways humans categorize images. For this monograph, Simon expanded 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. The book highlights Simon s explorations into the historic archive, and also offers a new perspective on some of the greatest twentieth-century artists, as she responds to previously unseen archival material, photographs, and correspondence of artists such as Diego Rivera, Lewis Hine, Paul Strand, and Walker Evans. The book includes an essay by Tim Griffin, former editor of Artforum and current executive director at The Kitchen in New York."