NEW YORK, NY.- Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes (Aperture, August 2010), is Trevor Paglen’s long-awaited first photographic monograph. Social scientist, artist, writer, and provocateur, Paglen has been exploring the secret activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies—the ‘black world’—for the last eight years, publishing, speaking, and making astonishing photographs. As an artist, Paglen is interested in the idea of photography as truth telling, but his mysterious compelling pictures often stop short of traditional ideas of documentation.

Invisible highlights the array of tactics used by Paglen to depict both what can and cannot be seen. In the series Limit Telephotography, he employs high-end optical systems to photograph top-secret government sites. In The Other Night Sky, Paglen works with the data of amateur ‘satellite watchers’ to track and photograph classified spacecraft in Earth’s orbit, while in other works he roots out revealing, yet arcane documents—passports, flight data, aliases of CIA operatives—and transforms them into art objects.

Showcasing the artwork of an important emerging talent, Invisible speaks to the multidisciplinary practices employed by many of today’s most interesting contemporary artists. Rebecca Solnit, noted author on culture and photography, contributes a searing essay that traces this history of clandestine military activity on the American landscape.

Trevor Paglen (born in Maryland, 1974) received a PhD in geography, as well as his BA, from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including the Transmediale Festival in Berlin, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2008 Taipei Biennial, and 2009 Instanbul Biennial. Paglen is represented by Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Thomas Zander, Colgne, Germany.

Rebecca Solnit (essay) is the author of many celebrated works of nonfiction. Her awards include an NEA Fellowship (1993), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000), and a National Book Critics Circle Award (2003).

9 ½ and 10 ¾ in. (24.1 x 27.3cm)
160 pages, 69 four-color and 8 duotone images
Hardcover with jacket
ISBN 978-1-59711-130-0
$49.95; £32.00