From Our Archives: Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen, They Watch the Moon, 2010 ©Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures
This interview originally appeared in Musée Magazine Issue 2: Fear
Andrea Blanch: How did you make the transition from academia to photography?
Trevor Paglen: I actually started with art. I was really involved in music and digital-audio, mostly sound audio, and music post-production. It was kind of through that, that I became more and more involved in video and moving images. So I really wen backwards from video into photography. A lot of people start with photography and then later become interested in moving images.
AB: How important do you think graduate school is to a fine art photographer today?
TP: I think it depends from person to person on what kind of artist they want to be. Some programs are much more technical. The Art institute of Chicago, where I went, was much more theoretical. We barely even made anything when I was in graduate school; it was very rigorous and helped us think about wha i twas hat we were doing. It incorporated a lot of theory and philosophy, which was very helpful in terms off trying o articulate what I was interested in as an artist. But I am a very particular kind of artists, and ha trajectory might be completely useless for somebody else. I don’ think here is any particular cookie cutter.
AB: How do you feel about transparency?
TP: The way that I’ve come to understand secrecy, is a bit counter-intuitive. I think that most of us think about secrecy as what you can know versus what you can’t know. I also think about secrecy as a series of institutions, and an array of state capacities and functions. Let’s say that you want to build a secret satellite. So we would think that the fact of having the satellite, that’s a secret. We would think, in order to build the satellite, you have to have a secret satellite factory, which means that you have to have a secret aero- space industry, which means you have to have thousands of people working on this project. You thus have to create a way for these people to keep secrets. You then have to have some kind of social, cultural and legal techniques for producing secrecy. Now, to fund this satellite, you have to do that in secret as well. You will then have to create a secret budget process. Finally, the satellite goes up and takes pictures. Presumably these pictures are going to be secret as well. How do you keep those secret? My point is that very quickly you start to build an alternative world that exists within the state, and you very quickly end up having a secret state and a not so secret state. Ultimately, there is one part of secrecy that relates to what information we have and what information we don’t. But I think much more about the secret industries and parts of the state that function with very different rules from what we imagine.
@Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures
AB: When you were speaking about geography theory you said that it is much more flexible. Can you elaborate on that?
TP: I became interested in geography for the following reason. When I was studying art, it was very much about representation. We were thinking about what kind of images do we produce? What is the meaning of this kind of image versus other images? What always bothered me was that we never talked about the fact that these images cost money; that they exist within an economy. We never talked about how images t into one kind of space or another. What is the meaning of an image if it is in the Louvre versus your friends’ basement versus somewhere else? Nor the power that becomes attached to images, which often times has nothing to do with what is inside the frame, but more with where the image is located. We never talked about the difference between an image in a book versus one in an institution. To me this felt like a real limitation of the art theory I had been taught. So as I began developing my own language and work as an artist, I wanted to be ableto incorporate political economy, or architecture. Or to beable to use different methods of thinking to look at what it was I was doing as an artist.
So when I came across geography theory it was a lot more robust in a certain manner. Art theory goes into representation and different ways of thinking about representation in very sophisticated ways. But geography theory is much more centered on the world around us. This is the way I think about geography theory. Geography theory is about trying to understand the ways in which humans sculpt theworld around them. What are the transformations that wemake to the surface of the earth? For example, we have created an apartment building. Humans have transformedthe surface of the earth in order to build that apartmentbuilding. In turn, that apartment building also transforms us because it says you are going to live in a certain way.Everybody will have their own unit, with different rooms.Thus the building is actively sculpting what human society will be. This is what I mean by a constant feedback loop. Culture and images t this mold, in this sense we produce meanings and we produce ways in which we relate to the world. Images through literature and so on and so forth,this is one of the ways we relate to the surface of the earth.There are political relationships, economical relationships, architectural relationships, biological relationships. Geog- raphy theory is much looser; it is trying to evaluate all of these things at the same time. It’s very different from art in that sense, but a lot of art theory can t into geographytheory as well.
Trevor Paglen. KEYHOLE 12-3 (IMPROVED CRYSTAL) Optical Reconnaissance Satellite Near Scorpio (USA 129), 2007 ©Trevor Paglen, Higher Pictures
AP: Can you give me an example of representation in art theory?
TB: Let’s think about Robert Mapplethorpe. What is remarkable about Mapplethorpe is a lot of his work is about queer images. He is trying to look at something in a different way. His idea of the default human or the default portrait subject is very different from the people before him. Mapplethorpe was trying to say, this is also what a human is. He is expanding the visual de nition of what a human or a portrait subject is. This is great, in that he is expanding the
cultural vocabulary, or the visual vocabulary we use to think about what people look like. Or rather, what the world lookslike. That is the idea behind representation theory. What does this image say? Where do they get made? Where are they shown? How much do they cost? Who collects them? There is not much of a theoretical language that talks about how this actual object works vis-a-vis auction houses and museums, regardless of what’s in the frame.
AB: Is that why you consider your work as art? Because it makes people see the world in a different way?
TP: Not necessarily, I mean I hope so. For me the work is allegorical and is intended to be very allegorical. There is no evidence of anything in any of the images I create.What is the relationship between what we see and whatwe understand? And how do we try to attach meanings to things that may or may not look like much of anything at all? What is our relationship to images that don’t speak for themselves? All of these questions are entangled inmy mind, and hopefully in my work. Ultimately, there is aquestion mark for me. I don’t know what this is? I don’t understand it? That’s something that I want to get across in my work. What is the act of looking at these things? Is that an allegory for something about our society or the world more generally?
AB: So you spend your own money on your work? Or do you look to others?
TP: At this point I raise all the money myself. In 2004, if youwould have asked for a grant to see what the CIA is doing in Afghanistan they would say, “no way”. But now it’s a little more open. I’ve been able to get a little funding, butfor the most part I make money from sales, lecture fees, and book royalties.
AB: How long after you started did you get into a gallery and have your first show?
About ten years. It took me a long, long time to develop a voice. For most people it takes a long time. Even artists in their twenties who have a show, I’m just really impressed that they were able to put a show together.
©Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures
AB: How do you feel the theory of art practice has shifted?
TP: When I went to graduate school, we just didn’t think about the difference between lm or photography, or technology or sculpture. There was no emphasis on one speci c mediaover another. We used ideas from all of these differenttraditions. Whereas, I think the generation before was probably much more focused on the speci c histories of each media, with a larger emphasis on whether you were a sculptor, or a painter, or a photographer or whatever it was. The way I was taught was much messier.
AB: You talk about counter-seeing and seeing with machines, can you elaborate on that?
TP: In my definition of photography we have traditional photography, but we also have things like Google earth, which is another machine that we use to see the world. MRI’s, television, video, lm, these are also machines that we use to see the world. Furthermore, spy satellites, different military imagery systems: like predator drones, and surveillance networks. These are all essentially cameras. They are all things that create images, but they’re alsoall embedded in political systems, military systems, and economic systems, and thus are all scripted in certainways. In other words, different seeing machines see theworld in particular ways, which in turn, affects the world. Apredator drone, for example, is a remote controlled ying camera; it wants to target the world not take landscape photos. There’s an aesthetic theme as well as a political theme. If you have a targeting computer, or targeting cam-era, then you need political and social institutions that arededicated to targeting. Where is the boundary between thecamera itself and the socio-political relationships aroundit? When I talk to other photographers, that is one of the main things that I bring up. In my opinion, it’s one of the things that we as photographers should be responsible for thinking about because we’re people who think abouthow machines see. Many people are worried about whatit means to be making images in the age of Google images. We have images of so much stuff, yet why are we making more images? Maybe if we crack open the de ni- tion of photography a bit more, then maybe it will open up the possibility of thinking about what it means to be a photographer in the 21st century.
Trevor Paglen, Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center, Groom Lake, NV; Distance ~ 26 miles, 2008 ©Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures
AB: What about art for art’s sake?
TP: I don’t think there’s such a thing as art for art’s sake. I thinkthat there is a lot of people who say they want art for art’s sake, and they say that because they want to bracket outa lot of uncomfortable stuff. I actually sympathize a lot withthat particular modernist version of an art for art’s sake.The version I sympathize with is the argument for refusing to speak the language of the dominant culture, thereby making oneself unintelligible. There is something to say for deliberate nonsense. Rothko for example, creates images that deliberately don’t have an intended mean- ing, and that is what is so powerful about them. They arenon-representational, they radically refuse to speak thelanguage of consumerism or advertising, at least formally. We don’t live in the 1950’s anymore and you’re crazy if you think that Rothko doesn’t say anything. I don’t think you can sit here and make this art for art’s sake argu-
ment in 2012. On the other hand, there is something to the idea that perhaps the most powerful things to look at are things that don’t tell us what they are. Then again, it’s not the 1950’s, and that gesture has to be different in thecontemporary moment.
AB: This notion of sublime. I like that. Is this something you continue with?
The notion of sublime is related to what we were just discussing. The way that I think about the sublime is thatmoment you are confronted with the limits of your abilityto understand something. The sublime is this moment in which you are confronted with something that you are not going to be able to understand, something that is quite powerful and quite awesome. This is pretty traditional. The Alps, for example, the sublime is their size and the factthat you could easily die on them. Or nuclear weaponscan be sublime, because of the overwhelming destructive force they possess. How can you even start to imagine what this means? That is something that speaks to me a lot because the question of the sublime is ultimately a question of what are our limits as humans? For me the sublime is not just the nuclear explosion, or the vastness of space, it’s also about the bureaucracy. The very eve- ryday things that structure our lives in ways that are also in nitely complicated and in nitely dif cult to understand.
TP: What would be sublime to you?
AB: In some of my work I photograph spy satellites. There is a tradition in art and human history in general of the sublime being associated with the night sky, looking up and not ever being able to understand fully what is going on in the sky, and that is what is so important about it. The sky is an in nite inverted mirror of ourselves. We project stories onto it and try to nd our destinies in it. Whether that be interpreting constellations as gods, or the Hubble Space Telescope taking pictures of galaxies that are tens of bil- lions of light-years away. Even though one is a scienti c question and one is a cultural question, they are trying to do the same thing. In other words, ask these big, big questions about where does the universe come from? And what does it all mean?
©Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures
AB: You said that art is seeing the world in a particular way and trying to communicate those ways to others?
TP: I think I make art for me but I make it for others too. I want to communicate with other people. Ifeel I’m very privileged to have a place in society where I can spend time looking at things and re- searching things, and there is nothing necessarily unique about my interests. I gure if I’m interested in something then there’s probably ten million otherpeople in the world who would be interested in itas well. Maybe my job is to try and tell those tenmillion people about it, in such a way that a lot of people can understand.
AB: What advice would you give an emerging photographer or a young artist who is just starting out?
TP: My main advice is that at the end of the day you have to do stuff that you enjoy, and you have to do what you love. The best advice I ever received in terms of building a career is don’t get famous doing something you don’t like, and live below your means (laughs).
AB: What is unique about your creative process?
TP: I spend an enormous amount of time at different places, where I will go and try to and a spot, photograph it, and then come back and look at it. I then realize I could do something else. It’s a slow process, and there are de nitely photographs thatI’ve worked on for four years at the same places,trying new ideas, and trying to understand howthese different places wanted to be represented. I’ve been offered commissions a couple times tophotograph speci c places, and I’ve always turned them down, because the idea that I have to gosomewhere and take a picture to deliver on some-one else’s schedule. It was just impossible for me to guarantee.
