American - Artist | 1974 -
Engineers working in the 'black world' of classified military projects are often referred to in military circles as 'black hats.' There are a lot of jokes about the difference between 'white hats' and their spooky counterparts.
Trevor Paglen
WorldBlackHatsWhiteEngineers
For millennia, artists and mystics have pondered the question of how to represent that which, by definition, cannot or must not be represented.
QuestionArtistsMustCannotHow
Before Christianity became the Roman Empire's official religion in the 4th Century, 'mystery religions,' organized around a central canon of secret knowledge, were widespread. Membership in such religions was limited to people who had passed through secret initiation rituals and had begun to learn a body of hidden knowledge.
KnowledgeReligionPeopleLearnBody
In religion, symbols have always played a iconographic and ritualistic role. Different symbols might represent different theological ideas.
ReligionIdeasAlwaysSymbolsRole
The most famous secret base, I guess, would be Area 51, which a lot of people have heard of as a kind of mythical place. Well, it's a real place.
PeopleFamousPlaceKindSecret
I have to admit that I'm not very good with grammar. They taught grammar in elementary and high school, but I went to public schools, so I never really learned it.
GoodSchoolHigh SchoolAdmitNever
'The Last Pictures' is meant to create a framework to think about the long-term effects of human civilizations and the transformations we've made to the world around us. Having said that, every person in the world would have done the project differently, so in that sense, I guess it bears my creative stamp.
CreativeWorldThinkCreatePictures
On one hand, the idea of sending pictures off into the vastness of space and time seems nonsensical. On the other, I felt like the gesture carried an enormous amount of responsibility.
TimeResponsibilitySpacePictures
Geosynchronous spacecraft will be among civilization's most enduring remnants, quietly circling Earth until the Earth is no more.
EarthCivilizationWillMoreMost
If I was a CIA front company, what would I want to be able to do? Well, I would want to be able to land at military airfields as a civilian, so there's got to be some document that the Air Force or the Army has that would list all the civilian aircraft that are cleared to land at military bases.
ArmyWantAir ForceLandMilitary
Creative projects are rarely the result of a single person's efforts.
CreativeResultPersonSingleRarely
The U.S. space program has mythologies attached to pioneering and conquering, but the Russian tradition is very different. In the Russian tradition, the ultimate goal of humanity was to resurrect all humans.
SpaceTraditionHumanityGoalVery
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