‘Images mediate political operations, public and covert. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the most significant events that have occurred over 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 United States intelligence agencies with high-resolution photography of targets around the world. Satellite reconnaissance has been touted as 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 (NRO) drastically expands its satellite constellations and the Air Force advances wide-area motion imagery systems, rapid and persistent imaging of locations and activities anywhere on Earth is the status quo.
Photographic reconnaissance is only one way images have been instrumentalized to further the US’s imperial objectives and maintain global dominance. Beginning in the early Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and State Department worked with cultural institutions to internationally promote American modern art, combating the perception abroad of the US as militaristic and philistine. Edward Steichen’s Family of Man traveling photography exhibition was sponsored by the US Information Agency, a state propaganda operation. Spy planes flew high above denied territories as a state-sanctioned de Kooning painting hung on a museum wall. Rocket engines ignited in California while someone in Poland gazed at The Walk to Paradise Garden.
Critical Collection
Image Intelligence and Empire
Evan Hume
October 3 - 24, 2025
Reception: Friday, October 24th, from 5 to 7PM
Critical Collection is an assemblage of declassified archival photographs and other found images I have processed and recontextualized. I obtained source material primarily from the CIA, NRO, and National Archives. With photographic intelligence gathering at its core, this work expands centrifugally, making unexpected conceptual and visual connections. Here, photography forms a constellation of conflict, propaganda, surveillance, and deep politics that emanates from the establishment of a global empire. I use experimental imaging methods to alter and combine the amassed photographs, exhibiting the malleability of images and historical narratives. At a time of AI proliferation and heightened global tension, Critical Collection encourages viewers to look closely at remnants of the once-secret imaging systems that have shaped the world and imagine what remains unseen.
Critical Collection: Image Intelligence and Empire will be published as a monograph this fall by Daylight Books. The book features 50 new artworks by Evan Hume, including the works in this solo exhibition, as well as his essay, “Deep Photography and the Politics of Overhead Reconnaissance,” detailing the ideological dimensions of photographic intelligence gathering and covert action. Art historian Dr. Lily Brewer writes the foreword, providing an overview of Hume’s art practice in the context of bureaucracy and state secrecy. Following his previous monograph, Viewing Distance, this new volume continues Hume’s historical and contemporary reframing of photography as an instrument of the military-industrial complex.