Trevor Paglen
Untitled (Reaper Drone)
2010
On View in James M. Kemper Gallery, Room 3
Trained as an artist and as a geographer, Trevor Paglen creates photographs that blur the lines between science, art, and journalism, often focused on that which cannot be seen, such as hidden or secret military sites. In Untitled (Reaper Drone), he captured a dramatic section of the Nevada sky in the early hours of the morning using a telephoto lens. The tiny black speck in the lower right corner of the golden, cloud-filled sky is a Reaper drone, an unmanned aircraft operated by military personnel, out of a remote base in Nevada. While the artist’s attention to atmospheric qualities evokes both nineteenth-century Romantic landscape painting and modernist abstraction, overtly connecting with earlier artistic investigations into the concept of landscape, his work also draws meaningful parallels between modernist abstraction and the increasingly abstract state of contemporary warfare. [Permanent collection label, 2013]
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Artist
Trevor Paglen
(American, b. 1974)
- Title Untitled (Reaper Drone)
- Date 2010
- Medium Chromogenic color print
- Edition description 5/5
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Dimensions
image | 48 x 60 in.
- Credit line University purchase, Bixby Fund, 2012
- Object number WU 2012.0001
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Technique
color photography
chromogenic processes
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Work type
photograph
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Theme
War and Conflict
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Currently on View
James M. Kemper Gallery, Room 3
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To See Without Being Seen: Contemporary Art and Drone Warfare
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