Contraband @ Kennedy Airport

Over the weekend, I saw an amazing photo essay on contraband items at the Kennedy Airport in New York.

Taryn Simon, a Guggenheim fellow who lives in New York, spent five days and nights at Kennedy, barely sleeping. Her daily rhythms were driven by the relentless arrival of newly impounded goods. After negotiating for four months with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Ms. Simon received permission to photograph all newly arriving contraband from Nov. 16 to Nov. 20, 2009. She used a large-format camera and a neutral backdrop.

“I wanted the shoot to be somewhat of a performance piece, where my photographs were replicating the actual flow of goods during a very fixed period of time,” she said.

The process was exhausting. “There’s video footage of me at the end of the shoot, being woken up by someone to press the shutter,” Ms. Simon said. “I was literally falling off my seat.”

I wish I could pick out a favorite, but so many of the images just seem plain odd. Who brings 'unknown' meat in a canteen bottle on an airplane? Dead guinea pigs? Cow dung toothpaste?