A Living Man Declared Dead
Production Date: 2008-2011
A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I – XVIII is a photographic series by artist Taryn Simon that was executed in a four-year period (2008–2011), during which Simon travelled across the world tracing and researching different bloodlines. The series comprises 18 “chapters” that document individual bloodlines. The chapters are investigations of fate, blood, psychological inheritance and what the artist refers to as “a relentless persistence of birth and death, and an endless collection of stories in between.” The subjects documented by Simon include feuding families in Brazil, victims of genocide in Bosnia, the body double of Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, and the living dead in India. PCRC’s Velma Šarić worked closely with Simon as a Bosnian Field Producer for this exhibition finding stories of Bosnian citizens after the genocide in 1995.