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Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes

by Trevor Paglen

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Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes is Trevor Paglen's longawaited 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 mysterious, compelling pictures o!en stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. Invisible highlights the array of tactics used by Paglen to depict both what can and cannot be seen. In the series Limit Telephotography, he employs highend optical systems to photograph top-secret governmental sites. In The Other Night Sky, Paglen works with the data of amateur "satellite watchers" to track and photograph classified spacecra! in Earth's orbit, while in other works he roots out revealing, yet arcane documents--passports, flight data, aliases of CIA operatives--and transforms them into art objects. Showcasing the artwork of an important emerging talent, Invisible speaks to the multidisciplinary practices employed by many of today's most interesting contemporary artists. Rebecca Solnit, noted author on culture and photography, contributes a searing essay that traces this history of clandestine military activity on the American landscape.… (more)
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Anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, in her magisterial ethnography [b:Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century|72724|Shadows of War Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century (California Series in Public Anthropology, 10)|Carolyn Nordstrom|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170818458s/72724.jpg|70396], writes about how “the politics of invisibility” are not accidental: “it is created, and created for a reason… the modern state is as dependent on shadow economies and warzone profits as it is on keeping those dependencies invisible to formal reckoning.” This retrospective collection of Paglen’s photography – of military spacecraft orbiting the Earth, secret airfields in Nevada (looking eerily like Ansel Adams’ famous moonrise photograph), blurry photocopies of fake IDs of CIA officials involved in extraordinary rendition -- is both incontrovertible testimony and a reversal of the hierarchy of photographic power: it is now us who sees the workings of the state laid bare, made terrifyingly visible. ( )
  thewilyf | Dec 25, 2023 |
This is an Art Book, not a Fact Book (as some of Paglen's other books are). It is broken into sections for his Limit Telephotography series, The Other Night Sky, a compilation of doctored documents relating to CIA extraordinary rendition flights, badges and Challenge Coins from top secret programs, and an exhaustive (and surreal) list of program code names. However, Paglen's work doesn't fit neatly into either the Art or the Fact box so the book's attempt to make his images and accumulated documents speak for themselves with little explanatory text (about one page per series) is this collection's major failing.

Yet, I'm not suggesting that anyone interested in the Beast should pass on this book. It's worth it if only for Rebecca Solnit's excellent introductory essay, the rich mine of inspiration that is that list of code names (Retract Juniper?!?!?! Imminent Horizon?!?!? Scattered Casles?!?!!), and, of course, the evocative image of the "classified landscape." Thanks, Trevor. ( )
  knownever | Mar 21, 2012 |
This book is more of an exhibition catalogue than Paglen's other books, and seems more like an overview of his artistic work than a complete exploration of any single aspect of it.

There are different unit patches and similar material than the materials in _I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World_. There are also a number of very long distance photographs of black sites, shady transport aircraft, and so on, and photographs showing the tracks of surveillance and navigation satellites, but these are mostly presented as art and the accompanying explanatory information is slim.

If you're interested in the secret worlds that Paglen explores, _Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World_ is a much deeper book. ( )
  cmc | Sep 16, 2010 |
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Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes is Trevor Paglen's longawaited 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 mysterious, compelling pictures o!en stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. Invisible highlights the array of tactics used by Paglen to depict both what can and cannot be seen. In the series Limit Telephotography, he employs highend optical systems to photograph top-secret governmental sites. In The Other Night Sky, Paglen works with the data of amateur "satellite watchers" to track and photograph classified spacecra! in Earth's orbit, while in other works he roots out revealing, yet arcane documents--passports, flight data, aliases of CIA operatives--and transforms them into art objects. Showcasing the artwork of an important emerging talent, Invisible speaks to the multidisciplinary practices employed by many of today's most interesting contemporary artists. Rebecca Solnit, noted author on culture and photography, contributes a searing essay that traces this history of clandestine military activity on the American landscape.

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