DETACHMENT 3, AIR FORCE FLIGHT TEST CENTER, GROOM LAKE, NV, DISTANCE APPROX. 26 MILES
2008
c-print
40 x 50 inches
edition 1 of 5

San Francisco-based Trevor Paglen’s photographs go where one’s eyes are not allowed. In paradoxically beautiful ways, Paglen has found ways to capture off-limits areas and unnoticed phenomena with today’s increasingly sophisticated surveillance and image-making equipment. For this blurry image of a military airbase, Paglen employed a powerful lens across a great distance to photograph the bare nighttime details of planes, lights and landscape. The calm beauty of a Whistler nocturne of distant lamplight on water is recalled but then negated by the aggressive glare of electronic military lights, the exact function and purpose we will most likely never know. Paglen’s photograph of invisible-to-the-eye paths of surveillance satellites was recently given to the Dallas Museum of Art. His work was seen in solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum and the Vienna Secession and in group exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennial and at the New Museum, New York, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among many others. Paglen received his B.A. from UC Berkeley, his M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography also from UC Berkeley. In 2011-2012, he will be artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

estimated retail value:  $10,000

opening bid:  $6,500

SOLD

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