Limit-Telephotographer Spies on Stealth Military Installations

[Ian David]

Trevor Paglen's subjects are good at keeping secrets — and their distance: Many miles of secure federal land frequently surround the off-limits military installations that he goes to great lengths to photograph. To zoom in on them, Paglen — a photographer and geography buff — developed what he calls limit-telephotography.

It's a hack based on astrophotography, a technique normally used to shoot distant planets. "It's much more difficult to take a picture of something on the ground than of something trillions of miles away," he says. Paglen modded the lens mount on his standard-issue Canon digital SLR to accept high-powered telescope lenses ranging in focal length from 1,300 mm to 7,000 mm (a typical telephoto is about 300 mm).

To capture the heavens, such lenses peer through at least 5 miles of relatively dense atmosphere. Aimed at terrestrial subjects, they magnify and distort the up to 65 miles of air, dust, and smog that hovers between camera and subject. The resulting shots, some of which go on exhibit in July at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, are hazy abstractions that expose a certain truth, yet leave everything to the imagination.


Name: "Morning Commute (Gold Coast Terminal)"
Times: 6:26 am
Distance: 1 mile
Location: The 737s fly out of a small terminal, code-named Gold Coast, on the west end of the Las Vegas McCarren Airport. Paglen booked a room at a nearby hotel that gave him a direct line of site to the terminal. Photographed in the morning, workers board the planes on their way to work — the military's version of casual carpool.




"Area 52 Control Tower" The Tonopah Test Range is part of Nevada's Nellis Range Complex, which is roughly the size of Connecticut (the US Air Force conducts large-scale war games in its airspace). The remoteness of the base — Paglen snapped this shot from 20 miles away — ensures that equipment tested here remains secret.

Slide show:
http://www.wired.com/culture/art/multimedia/2007/06/pl_art

More:
http://www.wired.com/culture/art/magazine/15-07/pl_art

[uppityperson]

1. Interesting stuff.

Although it makes me wonder if he'll get or has gotten a visit from the gvt.

[Gold Metal Flake]

2. Tail Numbers

"Tail numbers" A fleet of 737s, based in a small terminal at the west end of the Las Vegas airport, flies workers to classified military sites. Paglen used aerial photographs to locate the covert ­terminal and determine the best vantage point for this pic. He settled on a casino a mile away.

[Liberal In Texas]

3. Janet Airlines. The "secret" gov't . shuttle to Area 51.

The story has been around for awhile. Anyone driving by the airport in Las Vegas can see the white 737's with the red stripes.

http://www.lazygranch.com/janair.htm



Interesting post, though.

[Ian David]

4. Yes, but what they DON'T get to see is what happens when they land at Area 51

It's a cookbook! A cookbook!

[Liberal In Texas]

5. Good one, IanDB1 ! n/t