Over the course of photographing for what would become his 2010 monograph Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, Trevor Paglen spent years tracking the orbit of American military spacecraft and documenting their ghostly trails across the night sky. The resulting images (which also appeared in Aperture # 191) were as much about photography itself—exploring the power and the limits of photographic knowledge—as they were meditations on the relationship between humankind and the infinite. In a fascinating evolution of this work, Paglen is now behind The Last Pictures, a project that will attach a record of human photographic images onto a satellite that will be sent into orbit in September 2012. Paglen spent five years interviewing scientists, artists, anthropologists, and philosophers to decide what images should compose this photo-historical record, and then worked with materials scientists at MIT to inscribe the 100 images he chose onto an “ultra-archival” silicon disc (not unlike the Pioneer Plaques and the Voyager Golden Record) that will be attached to EchoStar XVI. This satellite will function as a regular television satellite for the next fifteen years before powering down, entering a “graveyard orbit,” and remaining for billions of years as a photographic relic of modern human civilization for future civilizations and lifeforms to discover. And perhaps it will even show up in one of Paglen’s future photographs.

Here on earth in the year 2012, you can catch Paglen’s lecture tour (beginning September in New York) featuring philosophers and scientists discussing the project. Later this year, Creative Time will publish a book of the images, accompanied by short texts by those who contributed to the project. For more on Paglen and his work, visit his website.

Photo by Trevor Paglen, courtesy the artist

Social scientist, artist, writer, and provocateur Trevor 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 often stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes is Paglen’s long-awaited first photographic monograph, published by Aperture.

Trevor Paglen (born in Maryland, 1974) received a PhD in geography, as well as his BA, from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, he is represented by Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany. He lives and works in New York and Oakland, California.

Artist lecture
on Tuesday, February 15, 7pm

Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Click here to purchase Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, Trevor Paglen book.

New publications from Aperture’s award winning book program are now available for purchase:

Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes

Trevor Paglen’s first photographic monograph compiles eight years of the photographer’s widely acclaimed work exploring the secret activities of the U.S. millitary and intelligence agencies with his camera. Paglen’s mysterious and compelling images play with conventions of documentary using an array of techniques and approaches to consider what can and cannot be seen.

Click here to read more about Trevor Paglen’s new book Invisible

One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds

Photographer Dave Anderson documents the evolution of a New Orleans block as it’s residents rebuild after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in new monograph One Block. On the occasion of the 5th anniversary of Katrina, these images consider the great resilience, hope and struggle of a community.

Click here to view interviews with residents featured in Dave Anderson’s One Block

Click here to read more about Dave Anderson’s new book One Block

ReGeneration 2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today

ReGeneration is back! Following the success of 2005 anthology and exhibition ReGeneration which featured works by Pieter Hugo, Idris Khan, Angelina Strassheim and Nathalie Czech, ReGeneration 2 turns the spotlight once more on the up and coming generation of image makers. Showcasing over two hundred images of eighty emerging artists, reGeneration 2 proves that the art of photography is alive and well, and that practitioners of extraordinary talent are well on their way to making their mark.

Click here to read more about new Anthology ReGeneration 2: Tomorrows Photographers Today

Destroy This Memory

Richard Misrach’s Destroy This Memory is an affecting reminder of the physical and psychological impact of Hurricane Katrina. Rather than simply surveying the damage, Misrach-who has photographed the region regularly since the 1970s, most notably for his ongoing Cancer Alley project-found himself drawn to the hurricane-inspired graffiti: messages scrawled in spray paint, crayons, chalk, or whatever materials happened to be on hand. Created between October and December 2005, this haunting series of images serves as a potent document of the raw experiences of those left to fend for themselves in the aftermath of Katrina.

Click here to read more about Richard Misrach’s Destroy This Memory

Check out new Aperture projects by Sanna Kannisto and Trevor Paglen coming soon, made possible by the Aperture Fund for Emerging Artists. In this clip, watch Trevor Paglen talk about his exploration of covert activities by the U.S. Government in his first monograph, Invisible, to be released in Fall 2010, and Aperture’s publisher Lesley A. Martin speaking about our long standing commitment to discovering and publishing the work of new and visionary photographers.

Often shot from a long distance, Paglen explains how the fuzziness of his images questions how we perceive and interpret images in our society using techniques from both the photography and the astronomy fields. Following the tradition of 19th century landscape photographers like Muybridge, he speaks about his series of spy satellites taken over pictorial western landscapes connecting the dots between both, as tools of discovery for unknown territories and geographical expansion. Paglen finally touches on the political performance as part of his photographic practice.

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