Foresight, Hindsight and State Secrecy in the American West: The Geopolitical Aesthetics of Trevor Paglen

Abstract

This article relates the current discourse on image wars to the interdisciplinary practice of ‘experimental geography’ in the writings and photographs of Trevor Paglen. In his ongoing project to map the dark geographies of covert military activity in the American southwest, Paglen engages a dialectical method that turns the imperial apparatus of surveillance against itself. Performing his photographic campaigns as a series of interventions into the aesthetic traditions of American landscape art, Paglen solicits a critical exploration not only of the power of military technology, but also of the power of imagination.

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