Airport contraband

Taryn Simon spent five days photographing items confiscated from people flying into New York’s JFK airport. This one is “mystery meat”:

These images are from a set of 1,075 photographs — shot over five days last year for the book and exhibition, “Contraband” — of items detained or seized from passengers or express mail entering the United States from abroad at the New York airport. The miscellany of prohibited objects — from the everyday to the illegal to the just plain odd — attests to a growing worldwide traffic in counterfeit goods and natural exotica and offers a snapshot of the United States as seen through its illicit material needs and desires.

Here’s more about the project, which will be released in book form and also put on display in galleries in LA and NYC.

• legal
• NYC
• photography
• Taryn Simon
• travel