Carter curated a presentation of images from artists such as Trevor Paglen and David Taylor, who use deep investigative research methods to inform their work — Paglen, for example, often finds the names of classified military programs by searching for government job listings. Both men create work that discusses the covert culture surrounding intelligence in America, often shedding light on information that would otherwise be unknown to the public.
A view of the Tonopah Test Range from eighteen miles away, this image is part of Paglen’s “Limit Telephotography” series, in which he uses telescopes typically employed in astrophotography in order to shoot far-off places. The blur effect is a result of dust and convection waves rising off the desert floor.
Artist Trevor Paglen is fascinated by the notion that these spacecraft will be the most enduring relics of human civilization. When invited by the public art organization Creative Time to make a project about space, he proposed to somehow send up images with a satellite, and that those images would be “a story about what happened to the people who build the great ring of dead machines around Earth.” The project, The Last Pictures, rolls out in New York next week, ending a five-year journey.
