Trevor Paglen

Overview

Trevor Paglen (b. 1974) lives and works in New York, NY. As an artist, filmmaker, investigator, technologist, and theorist, Paglen asks questions around vision, perception, materiality, and aesthetics. His wide-ranging oeuvre includes work on artificial intelligence and computer vision, aerospace technology, secrecy and conspiracy, experimental landscapes, speculative fiction, nuclear histories, notional archaeology, psychological operations, and the Weird.

Paglen has photographed secret military bases from enormous distances, tracked classified satellites and objects of unknown origin in earth orbit, led underwater tours of internet infrastructure, created a radioactive sculpture for a nuclear exclusion zone, profiled an Air Force disinformation specialist, built numerous AI and computer vision models, performed with the Kronos Quartet, written several books, and launched two sculptures into space, among other things.

Ultimately, Paglen poses the following question: How can we learn to see the world at a moment in time where accelerating technologies, politics, and cultures come up against the limits of reason and perception?

Documents

Works

Trevor Paglen
Near Cemetery Road (undated), 2024
Pigment print
10 x 14 in
25.4 x 35.6 cm
Framed: 18 3/4 x 18 3/4 in
47.6 x 47.6 cm
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Trevor Paglen
Near Highway 80 (undated), 2024
Dye sublimation on aluminum print
48 x 64 in
121.9 x 162.6 cm
Framed: 49 x 65 1/4 in
124.5 x 165.7 cm
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Trevor Paglen
UNKNOWN #85217 (Unclassified object near the Cone Nebula), 2023
Silver gelatin LE print
80 x 54 in
203.20 x 137.16 cm
Framed: 82 1/4 x 55 1/8 x 2 1/4 in
208.9 x 140 x 5.7 cm
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Trevor Paglen
Near Sereno del Mar | Deep Semantic Image Segments, 2022
Dye sublimation print
48 x 64 in
121.9 x 162.6 cm
Framed: 49 1/8 x 65 1/4 in
124.8 x 165.7 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
Lower Yosemite Falls | Deep Semantic Image Segments, 2021
Dye sublimation print
54 x 40 1/2 in
137.2 x 102.9 cm
Framed: 55 1/8 x 41 5/8 in
140 x 105.7 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
Bloom (#52392e), 2020
Dye sublimation print
54 × 40 ½ in
137.16 × 102.87 cm
Framed: 55 ⅛ × 41 ⅝ × 2 in
140.02 × 105.73 × 5.08 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
From Glacier Point | Circle Hough Transform; Watershed; Haar; Hough Transform; Maximally Stable Extremal Regions, 2020
Silver gelatin LE print
Triptych, each element: 80 x 39.9 in
203.20 x 101.35 cm
Framed: 81 1/2 x 121 in
207.01 x 307.34 cm
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Trevor Paglen
Seal Rocks | Circle Hough Transform; Region Adjacency Graph; Speeded-Up Robust Features; Watershed; Good Features to Track, 2020
Silver gelatin LE print
Triptych, each element: 80 × 39.9 in
203.20 × 101.35 cm
Framed: 81 ½ × 121 in
207.01 × 307.34 cm
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Trevor Paglen
View of the Moon | Scale-Invariant Feature Transform, 2020
Carbon print
Image dimensions: 16 × 20 in
40.64 × 50.80 cm
Paper dimensions: 20 × 24 in
50.80 × 60.96 cm
Framed: 22 ½ × 26 ½ in
57.15 × 67.31 cm
Edition of 5 plus 1 artist's proof
Trevor Paglen
CLOUD #735 | Scale Invariant Feature Transform; Region Adjacency Graph; Watershed, 2019
Dye sublimation print
48 x 66 in
121.9 x 167.6 cm
Framed: 49 1/2 x 67 1/2 in
125.7 x 171.4 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
They Took the Faces from the Accused and the Dead…, 2019
Set of 14 pigment prints
Each: 11 ½ × 13 ½ in
29.21 × 34.29 cm
Framed: 12 ⅛ × 14 ⅛ × 1 ½ in
30.80 × 35.88 × 3.81 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
Shoshone Falls | Hough Transform; Haar, 2017
Silver gelatin print
48 x 60 in
121.9 x 152.4 cm
Framed: 49 1/8 x 61 1/8 in
124.8 x 155.3 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
Americas II | NSA/GCHQ-Tapped Undersea Cable | Atlantic Ocean, 2015
C-print
48 x 60 in
121.92 x 152.40 cm
Framed: 49 1/8 x 61 1/8 in
124.78 x 155.26 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
Untitled (Reaper Drones), 2012-2021
Dye sublimation on aluminum print
48 x 62 in
121.9 x 157.5 cm
Framed: 49 1/8 x 63 1/8 in
124.8 x 160.3 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Trevor Paglen
MILSTAR 3 in Sagittarius (Inactive Communication and Targeting Satellite; USA 143), 2008
C-print
37 1/2 x 30 in
95.25 x 76.2 cm
Framed: 38 ¼ x 30 ¾ in
97.16 x 78.11 cm

Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs (#4/5)
Trevor Paglen
Five Classified Aircraft, 2007
Five fabric patches
Framed: 13 x 36 x 2 1/4 in
33 x 91.4 x 5.7 cm
Edition of 5 (#4/5)
Trevor Paglen
Morning Commute (Gold Coast Terminal); Las Vegas, NV; Distance ~ 1 mile; 6:26 a.m., 2006
C-print
30 x 36 in
76.2 x 91.44 cm
30 ⅞ x 36 ⅞ in
78.42 × 93.66 cm
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs (#5/5)