When I was working on the Landing Sites images, it occurred to me that if one were to literally “dive into” the seascapes that I was making images of, one should theoretically be able to see the actual material conjunctions of internet cables that I was trying to learn how to “see.” To do thisContinue reading “Undersea Cables”
Category Archives: Other Landscapes
The Other Night Sky
This is an ongoing project to track and photograph the world of secret satellites that are above our heads nearly constantly. Although the satellites I track and photograph in this series are not typically acknowledged by the United States, they are cataloged and observed by an international network of amateur “satellite observers,” whose observations IContinue reading “The Other Night Sky”
Limit Telephotography
Much of the history of surveillance, secrecy, and militarism can be found deep in the American deserts, where classified military bases and weapon ranges litter the remotest landscapes. Tucked away within massive restricted military ranges and buffered by dozens of miles of restricted land, there is often nowhere on Earth where a civilian might beContinue reading “Limit Telephotography”
89 Landscapes
89 Landscapes is a dual-channel video installation comprising material I filmed for Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’ Academy Award-winning film about Edward Snowden. The installation presents a series of landscapes, all of which have some kind of intrinsic relationship to the NSA’s mass surveillance infrastructures.
Landing Sites
As part of a larger project looking at the material infrastructures of the internet and mass surveillance, I located and photographed some of the primary “choke points” on the internet backbone – places where multiple undersea cables reach land and connect the continents together. Each photograph had two “rules”: first, the conjunction of internet cablesContinue reading “Landing Sites”
Eagle-Eye Photo Contest
While photographing and shooting a video of NSA infrastructures in Germany for Laura Poitras’ film Citizenfour, I was stopped and interrogated by police and military on a nearly daily basis. Although what I was doing was perfectly legal, the military still insisted on harassing me while I was doing my job. My response was toContinue reading “Eagle-Eye Photo Contest”
Karnak
I often think about the different histories of photography – how they intersect and diverge and how so much necessarily gets left out by any attempt to tell a coherent story about the history of the medium. I think a lot about the various histories of photography in the western US – a history ofContinue reading “Karnak”
Dive Expedition to Look at Undersea Cables
In 2015, I took a group of people on a scuba diving trip off the coast of Miami. Our goal: to see the internet in the form of the transoceanic communications cables that connect the continents together. Brian Boucher from Artnet News has a great report here. And the Creator’s Project made a video documentingContinue reading “Dive Expedition to Look at Undersea Cables”