Tag Archives: Photography

Clouds

I think about clouds a lot. They’re really strange things – on one hand, humans have gone to great lengths to characterize different kinds of clouds, creating intricate cloud atlases and taxonomies. On the other hand, when we look at clouds we tend to imagine them taking different shapes – faces, animals, and whatnot. AndContinue reading “Clouds”

Undersea Cables

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”

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”

The Fence

In 1979, astronomer W. T. “Woody” Sullivan worked with two undergraduates at the University of Washington to publish a now-classic paper entitled “Eavesdropping: The Radio Signature of Earth.” Sullivan et al. found that the brightest continuous signals emanating from earth came from military radar systems designed to detect ballistic missiles and track satellites in earth orbit,Continue reading “The Fence”

Rendition Flights

In the early 2000s, I did a lot of work investigating the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program. This was a program to kidnap, disappear, and torture people that the agency accused of terrorism. Done mostly in collaboration with investigative journalist AC Thompson, the work involved tracking airplanes that we knew the CIA was using forContinue reading “Rendition Flights”

Black Sites

With the beginning of the so-called War on Terror in the early 2000s, the CIA set up a network of secret prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Hundreds of “ghost prisoners” went through this system of extrajudicial disappearance and imprisonment. The black sites became synonymous with torture. The locations of the secret prisonsContinue reading “Black Sites”

Everyday Landscapes & Seventeen Letters from the Deep State

Everyday Landscape: Sportsflight Airways, Richmor Aviation, Dyncorp, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996-2006 is a sustained investigation into a network of aviation companies, private intelligence firms, state officials, and monied interests behind several covert government actions, including aspects of the CIA’s rendition program. Created from years of research into legal documents coupled with painstaking, paparazzi-like photographic work,Continue reading “Everyday Landscapes & Seventeen Letters from the Deep State”

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”

Color Studies

In the early 2000s I spent a number of years volunteering as an anti-prison activist, mostly producing media to assist in grassroots organizing campaigns against the construction of new prisons in California. Over the course of this work, I spent time with people in rural communities where the majority of prisons were being constructed. California’sContinue reading “Color Studies”