SFMOMA panel discussion “Is Photography Over?”

‘Photography’ for me,” [Trevor Paglen] wrote, “denotes a wide range of imaging practices … dialectically enmeshed with the construction of practical reality. … This includes everything from ‘art’ photography to iPhone snapshots, from MRI scans to the infrared eyes of CIA predator drones, and from surveillance cameras attached to facial-recognition software to minoritarian documentary practices from Rodney King to Abu Ghraib.”
Paglen is an artist, writer and an experimental geographer who says that “We can’t divorce imaging technologies from uses of power.” Reference is to Paul Virilio’s coinage of the term “sight machine” for the coalescence of imaging devices and their data that digital technology has permitted.

Secret OPs military patches

Secret OPs military patches, credit:NYT