Following bloodlines

Photos from Taryn Simon's work that investigates 18 family bloodlines. Photo by Taryn Simon For China Daily

She has created a work that investigates 18 family bloodlines. Her subjects take in polygamy in Kenya, the first woman in the world to hijack an aircraft, and children at Ukrainian orphanage. In 2009,she visited China to take pictures of Su Jianqi's 29 family members from Beijing.

After showing at London's Tate Modern, New York's MoMA and Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, the exhibition, A Living Man Declared Dead And Other Chapters I-XVIII is being shown at UCCA in Beijing, marking its premiere in Asia.

Following the tradition of her father and grandfather, who both worked extensively with image and text, the New York-based artist's work often catalogues something that is quite abstract conceptually but in giving these projects a determined title. She tells a story.

For Simon, whose artistic medium consists of three equal elements: photography, text, and graphic design, the experience of photographing bloodlines enabled her to "think in the opposite direction".

"I wanted to find an absolute catalogue-one that couldn't be edited or curated by choice, and something in which I couldn't determine my own path. This led me to blood," she says.