Reviews

Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes by Rebecca Solnit, Trevor Paglen

thewilyfilipino's review against another edition

4.0

Anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, in her magisterial ethnography [b:Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century|72724|Shadows of War Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century (California Series in Public Anthropology, 10)|Carolyn Nordstrom|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170818458s/72724.jpg|70396], writes about how “the politics of invisibility” are not accidental: “it is created, and created for a reason… the modern state is as dependent on shadow economies and warzone profits as it is on keeping those dependencies invisible to formal reckoning.” This retrospective collection of Paglen’s photography – of military spacecraft orbiting the Earth, secret airfields in Nevada (looking eerily like Ansel Adams’ famous moonrise photograph), blurry photocopies of fake IDs of CIA officials involved in extraordinary rendition -- is both incontrovertible testimony and a reversal of the hierarchy of photographic power: it is now us who sees the workings of the state laid bare, made terrifyingly visible.