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 Excerpt from Chapter XI A LIVING MAN DECLARED DEAD AND OTHER CHAPTERS I - XVIII Swedish photographer and scientist Lennart Nillson gained notoriety in the 20th century for his exploration of human anatomy. Endoscopes and other microscopic photographic devices abled Nillson to make images previously thought unrealizable  (he's credited with taking the first snap of HIV, for instance). Nilsson cemented international fame with a 1965 cover story for _Life_ _Magazine_, which featured fetus images he'd photographed, the most detailed and graphic society had ever witnessed. These alien and shocking images were re-printed in his book _A Child is Born_. Nilsson once remarked, regarding the challenges and complexity of endoscopy—which was integral to his work—"The light is our real enemy." That same statement might serve when considering the oeuvre of celebrated contemporary artist, Taryn Simon this issue's cover artist, whose monographic exhibitions have shown at MOMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, among others. Simon, 37, in her distinctive interplay of photography, lithography, and text, could be said to cast light or awareness, at times perhaps invasively, where there is otherwise an absence of knowing, or acknowledgement. Though not biological, this absence, like Nilsson’s, is inextricably connected to nature. Nature sees bloodlines hiccup. Nature sees pain. Nature sees persecution, quizzicality, injustice, oddity, secrecy, power, and repetition—all of which are thematically bandied about in Simon's museum-loved works.  Oca, Prohibited CONTRABAND To understand Simon’s approach to epistemology by way of photography, consider _Contraband_, her 1,075 image archive of items detained or seized from mail or passengers entering the U.S. from elsewhere. The entire collection was photographed over four days in 2009 at JFK's Customs and Border Protection Federal Inspection Site and the U.S. Postal Service International Mail Facility. The ensemble—at times comical, irreverent, bizarre, or mundane—speaks to a post-9/11 atmosphere where identity (or one’s ability to be identified) became closely associated with objects—the items we carry with us, or send, subversively or not, into a fortress of mythologies, of bureaucratic dominion and levity.  _Contraband_ was preceded by _An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar_, a somewhat similar investigation into the off-limits annals of America—nuclear waste facilities or the CIA's unusual art collection. Simon's photographic techniques distill, in some sense, the loaded mythology of her subject matter, creating a quiet sense of beauty, a nearly neutralized study of image association. Without Simon's textual contextualization, where is the threat, history, quirk, or power, of that within the frame? In her arguably most ambitious project to date, _A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII_, which showed at the Tate Modern and L.A.'s MOCA, among others, Simon worked for more than four years to create an image archive of bloodlines around the world. In each 'chapter,' Simon photographed a subject, and then sought sittings from ancestors and descendants—some of whom were deceased, some of whom declined, some of whom made themselves available. Each bloodline, thus, reflected the decisions of those still living. Some were marked with absence, refusal. The results, shot in uniform, almost clinical fashion, see victims of genocide; India's living dead; fundamental religious orders; and numerous others, imbuing the entire collection with an eerie sense of chance, disparity, and the ever-unpredictable influence of fate. Simon told the _Los Angeles Times_ that while she'd never studied genetics, she found the topic—"this order that we accept as absolute"—incredibly fascinating. "But with modern technology," she shared, "and artificial wombs and learning that people across the world are connected to each other genetically, that order breaks down. It becomes a bit of a mind scramble."  Folder: Abandoned Buildings and Towns THE PICTURE COLLECTION Simon’s latest project, _The Picture Collection_, which just closed at London's Gagosian Gallery, differs somewhat from Simon's usual efforts in that the images aren’t hers, or at least not exactly—they belong to the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, the largest circulating picture library in the world. From the library’s vast of more than 12,000 subject categories, Simon selected and organized serial gestures, actions, symbols, and activities of the 1.2 m prints, postcards, posters and images to create combinations of her own, which she then photographed. (Library cardholders are allowed to withdraw up to 60 images at one time.) _The Picture Collection_, Simon tells _Flaunt_, "reveals a human impulse to categorize, organize and systematize visual information in association with terms long before search engines. Technology permits fancier mutations, but the root desire is something that dates back likely to the dawn of man." This dawn meant light for man and, consequently, a ceaseless search for meaning. Simon's work does not suggest absolutism in this search; if anything, the opposite. For nothing in our personal nature, or our surroundings, is perfectly constructed to achieve its desired purpose. Everything, given our unique existence, is subject to flaw, mythological narrative making, imperfection, and in the spirit of this issue's theme—and thus Simon's involvement in its creative process—unequivocal _fabrication_.  Ngc 281, The Pacman Nebula. Kitt Peak Observatory National Observatory. Tohono O'odham Reservation, Arizona. AN AMERICAN INDEX OF THE HIDDEN AND UNFAMILIAR * * * Written by Matthew Bedard