Trevor Paglen: Power & Perspective | ART21 "Exclusive"

[Trevor Paglen: Power & Perspective]

[Griffin Editions, Photography Printing Studio]

--[PAGLEN] We can just put them over here,
if you...

--[MAN] Okay.

[PAGLEN] Yeah, there's a little bit of drama
around this picture.

We called up the NSA and said,

"We're going to fly a helicopter over your
headquarters—take pictures."

Which is perfectly legal.

They said, "We don't want you to do that."

We said, "Well, we're not asking permission,"

"we're just telling you that we're doing this—and
don't shoot us!"

And the NSA sent a bunch of guys—I think
seven guys—

and posted them up at all different places
in the airport to watch this flight.

And I think they were making phone calls to
the headquarters,

having certain lights turned on and off.

The woman who owns the helicopter had baked
a bunch of brownies,

and was actually driving around the little
airport,

like, playing "spot the NSA guys" and, like,
feeding them brownies.

One of the reasons why you typically actually
don't see photographs of the NSA headquarters

is because it's surrounded by trees.

[NSA Headquarters, public domain image]

There's only a couple of photographs, and
they're the couple that everybody uses.

--[MAN] I'm going to load this up.

--[PAGLEN] Okay.

[PAGLEN] I generally don't like these so-called
"bird's eye" or "God's eye" perspectives.

That perspective implies a, kind of, mastery
over something.

It implies that perhaps you can see this,

and that it's transparent and we can understand it,

and this is a, kind of, insignificant thing
which is on the ground below us.

[Mike Vorrasi, Senior Retoucher]

--[PAGLEN] Whoa! [LAUGHS]

--[VORRASI] So this is just me trying to do
some...

--[PAGLEN] What have you got going on there!?

--[VORRASI] So the red channel was really
bright,

--so I was just, sort of, just blending in
the blue channel a little bit.

--And the same with the blue.

--The blue was a little heavy, so I just sort
of was blending back in to see,

--then I was going to put that on a luminous.

--[PAGLEN] The next one is your profile?

--[VORRASI] Yeah, exactly.

--[PAGLEN] That's either your profile...

--[VORRASI] That's in our profile right now.

[PAGLEN] It does look like we're at a shopping
mall.

It seems like a very, kind of, normal kind
of looking place.

And I struggle with that, because on one hand,

the extent to which the NSA's tendrils are
in our everyday lives,

perhaps this perspective is at odds with that.

But what I like about the perspective in this
particular instance

is that it puts you in the situation where
we can look at a building like this and,

to some extent, perhaps imagine that in fact
these are civic institutions,

and that you, as a member of the public,

should be able to exert the same kind of power
over this institution

that we can symbolically do by looking at
a photograph shot from this perspective.

--[PAGLEN] Cool, so we'll save some variations
on this one for next time,

--and let's see, like, back on that Reaper
image...

--[VORRASI] Oh, yeah.

--[MAN] You want that up there?

[PAGLEN] This is about as big as it gets for
me.

There was only a couple of things that I've
done at this size.

So, I was just shooting, like, directly into
the sun with the four-by-five camera.

The idea for it actually came from a Turner
painting called "Angel in the Sun".

These drones are called Reapers, so this is
"The Reaper in the Sun".

--[PAGLEN] Cool. So this is the range of stuff
that we're looking at...

[PAGLEN] One of the advantages of using, like,
traditional kind of film

in a situation like that is that you can do
weird stuff

like over-expose a photograph, shooting directly
into the sun,

and still have some wiggle room--

have something to play with.

--[PAGLEN] Like, I wonder if there's, like,
a magenta ring around here,

--or if it's just like my eyes doing stuff.

--You know what I'm talking about?

--[VORRASI] Yeah.

--[PAGLEN] Yeah, it's super weird!

[PAGLEN] We've done tons of stuff where we
put two prints right next to each other,

and then we're like, "Oh, the one on the right.
Oh, it's cooler or whatever."

And then we'll shift them back over, and then
we're like,

"Oh, the one on the right!" [LAUGHS]

--[VORRASI] Yeah, yeah! No, definitely.

--Even, like, putting white magnets as opposed
to black magnets...

--So, I'm just, like, "If we could just cut
down on some variables, like,"

--"we can kind of concentrate on what is changing,
and how to, like, address those things."

[PAGLEN] In the sky, there traditionally is
a promise of, kind of, openness,

or a kind of freedom.

But the sky itself has been turned against us.

The drone is just the punctuation mark.

--[VORRASI] The drone looks great.

--[PAGLEN] Yeah.