TREVOR PAGLEN
Trevor Paglen is a geologist, photographer and author. He graduated with a B.A at UC Berkeley, MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Ph .D in Geography at UC Berkeley. Combining all of his formal education and research abilities in his art, Paglen creates series of images that deal with the technical aspects of science and journalism in art. Paglen’s series of images range from photographing and exposing secret locations in the United States to focusing on “Experimental Geography”, using both traditional and non-traditional methods of photography. Paglen has been applauded by critics for making momentarily shocking images and for creating series of works that utilize innovative technology. Major publications include The New York Times, Wired, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Modern Painters, Aperture and Artfourm. Additionally, he has appeared in different interviews such as The Colbert Report, The History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, Authors at Google and C-Span Book TV. Paglen currently lives and works in New York City.
How did you make the transition from academia to photography? I actually started with art. I was really involved in music and digital-audio, mostly sound audio, and music postproduction. It was kind of through that, that I became more and more involved in video and moving images. So I really went backwards from video into photography. A lot of people start with photography and then later become interested in moving images. How important do you think graduate school is to a fine art photographer today? 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 what it was that we were doing. It incorporated a lot of theory and philosophy, which was very helpful in terms of trying to articulate what I was interested in as an artist. But I am a very particular kind of artist, and that trajectory might be completely useless for somebody else. I don’t think there is any particular cookie cutter.
How do you feel about transparency? 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 aerospace 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. No. 2 Musée Magazine 89