Taryn Simon: Father Country I Do Love You

He acted as a middleman, witnessing events great and small, collecting evidence for someone else to slot into the bigger picture. Everything he touched ricocheted to the outer boundaries of nations and lives he’d never know. Father Country I Do Love You traces the life of an unnamed federal agent through 42 chapters, bringing together hundreds of photographs, text, video, and sculpture. In this labyrinth of stories, Taryn Simon uncovers the ripple effects of her protagonist’s actions and inactions, intertwining accounts of victims, predators, survivors, and the mechanics of justice. This narrative is shadowed by the life of Simon’s father, who lived in Thailand and traveled to Russia, Iran, Israel, China, Afghanistan, Korea, and elsewhere while working for the U.S. government, before ending his career manufacturing and selling arcade games. Simon never got his full story, but America, he always said, was the best story on earth, if you could find someone to tell it.