Trevor Paglen Response

I thought that the lecture was extremely interesting because of how he presented the thought process behind his work. He is extremely dedicated to his research and instead of creating projects about his research he creates projects using his research. I would describe his work as daring, complicated, and symbolic. First off his work is daring because it is based on exposing parts of the US government that are secretive, and also reveals operations that are going on that our country likes to think doesn't happen, such as with the kidnapping planes by the CIA. His work is complicated because he has to go through pages and pages of research in order to find one little clue and then use that clue to look through more pages of research to find another clue. I found his connections with the suspected front airline business' travel and the story of the man who claims he was kidnaped and taken aboard that plane. His work is symbolic because he presents this evidence that he finds, whether it is in text format or pictorial, and presents it to an audience, but leaves it up to his viewers to draw conclusions from it.

I found the work I was most interested in dealt with the story of the man who was kidnaped on his way to Macedonia, taken aboard a CIA plane and then brought to a prison in Afghanistan where he was kept for five months and tortured, until his captors realized they had the wrong man. This kind of story many people would have trouble believing, but through Trevor's research he was able to dig up that this story could be very truthful. The second work I found myself drawn to was his work in which he takes pictures of hidden government sites from 20, 40, or even 60 miles away. Though his photographs become difficult to make out at this distance, the images still have a startling symbolism.

I found that most interesting quote of the lecture was not something that he said, but something that was written on the back of a t-shirt in a picture in his slide. It said: "Democracy is not a spectator sport". I felt this quote explained everything that his work deals with. Instead of making work that abstractly has to do with the government, he creates work from his findings, and is much more straightforward about his concept.

Both of my questions were answered during the lecture, the first about whether or not he has gotten in trouble with the government for what his work is about. He said that this is a unique country in the fact that he was not immediately imprisoned for what he does. All the research he used was from public record and he is not making any assumptions about his research, he is just presenting what he finds and coincidences he comes across. My second question dealt with if he would consider himself more of a photojournalist than a fine art photographer. Above all else I think he considers himself a researcher who uses the art work to communicate his findings.