here & now

The Image Atlas is a recent project by Taryn Simon, and her first venture into the digital realm, but bearing all her signature interests in politics, society, cultural differences and visual representation. Based on a simple premise: if we experience the world more and more through the Internet, and through images in particular, what impact do national borders and differences still have? And are search algorithms really as neutral as they pretend to be? The answer varies, depending what you are looking for, as Image Atlas filters your search term through the local search engines of a good dozen of  countries, from the USA to Iran. Search for ‘mono.kultur‘, for instance, and it won’t mean a thing to Kenyans and to North Koreans, whereas the Germans think more about trees than about us, apparently, whereas Egyptians associate it with, erm, alcohol. Obviously, more inflammatory terms tell a very different story…