Invisible (1st ed., 1st printing)

"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.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 159
Number of images: 8
Publication date: 2010-08-30
Measurements: 9.8 x 10.9 x 0.9 inches
ISBN: 9781597111300

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.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of many celebrated works of nonfiction. Her awards include an NEA Fellowship (1993), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000), and a National Book Critics Circle Award (2003).