To go and photograph an airbase is not only to photograph something but it is to insist on oneโs right to photograph. Youโre flexing that right.
Trevor PaglenThe dead spacecraft in orbit have become a permanent fixture around our planet, not unlike the rings of Saturn. They will be the longest-lasting artifacts of human civilization, quietly circling Earth until the Sun turns into a Red Giant, about five billion years from now.
Trevor PaglenArt is more than a series of images that are disembodied. Art is objects that live in real places, economies, spaces, architecture.
Trevor PaglenThe U.S. generally wants to solve problems with coercion. That's kind of the default way the American state wants to try to solve problems. So there are many parallels between that: mass incarceration, mass surveillance, and militarism.
Trevor PaglenWhen you have an economically unequal society, you end up with huge swaths of society that are disposable, basically.
Trevor PaglenFor a time, people were getting arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. So to me, what it meant to do photography also changed. There was a new kind of politics to it - something that was very aggressive and dangerous - and a presumption that it would reveal some kind of truth or evidence.
Trevor Paglen