Images mediate political operations, public and covert. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the most significant events of the last century without the photographic forms in which they were captured. Lesser known and suppressed activities that have greatly impacted modern global power dynamics also leave photographic traces, and in many cases, photography has been at the center of clandestine actions by state and parapolitical actors.
Since the 1950s, overhead reconnaissance systems have supplied US intelligence agencies with high-resolution photography of targets around the world. Satellite photography has been touted as a necessary and effective for monitoring arms control agreements and thus maintaining peace, but as journalist William E. Burrows wrote in his late Cold War investigation of space espionage, a satellite system “can be made to find only what those who control it want it to find and nothing more.” Now, as the National Reconnaissance Office works with SpaceX to drastically expand its satellite constellations, rapid and persistent imaging of locations and activities around the world is the status quo.
Critical Collection is an assemblage of declassified archival photographs and other found images I have processed and recontextualized. With photographic intelligence gathering at its core, this work expands centrifugally, making unexpected visual and conceptual connections that form a complex web of fact and speculation. I employ experimental imaging methods to alter and combine the amassed photographs, visualizing the malleability of images and historical narratives. At a time of AI proliferation and heightened global tension, Critical Collection compels viewers to look closely at the once-secret photographic systems that have shaped the world and imagine what remains unseen.