Trevor Paglen Quotes

Art is more than a series of images that are disembodied. Art is objects that live in real places, economies, spaces, architecture.

I really do think of them as post-minimalist sculptures, inspired in large part by some very early spacecraft that NASA built.

Injustice drives me crazy! It really upsets me when I see politicians lying.

Perhaps someday in the distant future, dinosaurs may once again rule the Earth. If they ever learn to watch the stars, then maybe they will find our ruins in the sky.

To go and photograph an airbase is not only to photograph something but it is to insist on one’s right to photograph. You’re flexing that right.

For a time, people were getting arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. So to me, what it meant to do photography also changed. There was a new kind of politics to it - something that was very aggressive and dangerous - and a presumption that it would reveal some kind of truth or evidence.

The dead spacecraft in orbit have become a permanent fixture around our planet, not unlike the rings of Saturn. They will be the longest-lasting artifacts of human civilization, quietly circling Earth until the Sun turns into a Red Giant, about five billion years from now.

The U.S. generally wants to solve problems with coercion. That's kind of the default way the American state wants to try to solve problems. So there are many parallels between that: mass incarceration, mass surveillance, and militarism.

When you have an economically unequal society, you end up with huge swaths of society that are disposable, basically.

The switch has been built. Maybe you trust Barack Obama not to throw that switch, and maybe you trust George Bush not to throw that switch, but as we look towards the future, we see inequality becoming more and more acute. We're seeing more and more protests against cops and this kind of thing. We're also seeing more and more natural disasters. We're seeing more and more environmental insecurity.

I'm pretty cynical about the future, but I feel like that's not an ethical position for me to take. It's not okay for me to behave as if I'm cynical about the future. Even if I am.