Trevor Paglen ist ein Künstler und Schriftsteller, dessen Werk bewusst die Grenzen zwischen Sozialwissenschaften, zeitgenössischer Kunst und Journalismus verwischt. Durch sorgfältig recherchierte Erkundungen konstruiert Paglen ungewohnte, aber zugängliche Wege, die Welt um uns herum zu sehen und zu interpretieren. Seine visuellen Werke und Publikationen untersuchen verborgene Machtstrukturen und die visuellen Kulturen, die unser Verständnis von Realität prägen. Paglens Arbeit fordert die Betrachter heraus, kritisch zu hinterfragen, wie wir die Welt sehen und interpretieren, und enthüllt die unsichtbaren Aspekte des modernen Lebens.
The 70 military shoulder patches presented in this book reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon, where classified projects are known by peculiar names and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. The patches are precisely photographed, hinting at a world about which little is known
Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes is Trevor Paglen's long-awaited first photographic monograph. Social scientist, artist, writer and provocateur, Paglen has been exploring the secret activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies--the "black world"--for the last eight years, publishing, speaking and making astonishing photographs. As an artist, Paglen is interested in the idea of photography as truth-telling, but his pictures often stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. In the series Limit Telephotography, for example, he employs high-end optical systems to photograph top-secret governmental sites; and in The Other Night Sky, he uses the data of amateur satellite watchers to track and photograph classified spacecraft in Earth's orbit. In other works Paglen transforms documents such as passports, flight data and aliases of CIA operatives into art objects. Rebecca Solnit contributes a searing essay that traces this history of clandestine military activity on the American landscape.