2016 Catalogue Archive

The difficult task of investigating and photographing the US government’s highly secretive drone program has been the focus of Trevor Paglen’s project since the 2000s. “I was thinking about the colonisation and transformation of the sky as an aesthetic thing, but also a political thing,” he says. “To photograph something is to insist on one’s right to photograph it. It’s an act that is very embodied – it’s a performance, in a way.” His photographs range from landscapes with the small recognizable drones hovering in the sky to works like this one, where the blurred image attempts to document the often unseen drone mid-flight. Born in the US, Trevor Paglen lives and works in Berlin. His photographs are in collections throughout the world – including the Dallas Museum of Art – and he was recently awarded the Deutsche Börse photography prize for the Drone Project.