Trevor Paglen

About

Trevor Paglen's work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines. Among his chief concerns are learning how to see the historical moment we live in and developing the means to imagine alternative futures. He has launched an artwork into distant orbit around Earth in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT, contributed research and cinematography to the Academy Award–winning film Citizenfour, and created a radioactive public sculpture for the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan. Paglen is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, and Art Forum. Paglen holds a BA from UC Berkeley, an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in geography from UC Berkeley. He was the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Award in 2017. Paglen's work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Art Museum; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Nevada Museum of Art.