A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters at Tate Modern

Entry: Free

I try to write exhibition reviews the day I see the exhibition. In the past I've found that if I put off writing the review for longer than 48 hours I end up never writing it at all. Usually if I put off writing a review it's just because I'm too busy, but sometimes I put it off because I'm not really sure what to say, as was the case with Taryn Simon's photography exhibition, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters. I went to see this on Wednesday, and since then I've been thinking about it almost non-stop without really coming to a conclusion about it.

The exhibition is divided into 18 “chapters”, with each chapter telling a real-life story. Each chapter is divided into three parts: a series of photographs of the relatives of the person the story is about; a piece of text telling the story; and a series of photographs of artefacts that relate to the story. If any of the relatives in a particular chapter declined to participate then they are represented by a blank background. Each story is presented without comment, though it quickly becomes apparent that many of the stories are about violence or exploitation in some way – a kidnapping in South Korea, a family feud in Brazil, a living man in India declared dead by relatives and corrupt officials.

It's not a beautiful exhibition. The people photographed are ordinary people and they sit hunched and worried, as if they're uncertain about the advisability of revealing their family secrets to the world. Though their names, occupations and birth dates are listed, their relationships to each other and to the person whose story is being told are not, leaving you to make guesses based on surnames and trying to find similarities in their faces.

And trying to find those similarities is very compelling. I found myself trying to guess what the story could be just by looking at the images. It's also an effectively creepy exhibition. It reduces personal tragedy to impersonal documentary, gives the impression that everyone must be hiding some strange story, and builds into one huge, overarching picture of suffering.

The question of whether or not people inherit this suffering from their ancestors hangs over it all. Some of the people shown have been directly affected by the actions of those in the past, others seem to have escaped the past, or tried to. Some don't want to give up their connection to the past. There are no answers here, which is why it's taken me so long to write this review. I don't have any answers to the questions the exhibition raises, and Simon doesn't offer any. She presents the facts of each case to you and then moves on. It's up to you to impose some meaning or logic on to these narratives. In the end it's this uncertainty that makes it so worth seeing though, and makes this the most unsettling and thought-provoking exhibition I've been to this year.