From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaeologist

Trevor Paglen’s From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaeologist is a stark photographic inventory of fifty-nine objects (challenge coins, patches, models, and other classified-program ephemera) drawn from the private archive of Peter Merlin, the country’s foremost historian of secret aircraft.

Merlin, a former NASA archivist, has spent decades collecting flight wreckage, dossiers, and memorabilia from bases such as Area 51 and Edwards Air Force Base and their surrounding crash sites, often the only surviving trace of programs the government never officially acknowledged. Working from Merlin’s conviction that “something always remains,” Paglen photographed fifty-nine pieces, from the atomic age to today’s drone wreckage, in flat, deadpan close-up, paired with his own captions and an essay on secrecy and military symbology. Primary Information published the book: 150 pages, paperback, edited by Miriam Katzeff, designed by David Schoerner.

Trevor Paglen (b. 1974) is an American artist and geographer who took a PhD in geography at UC Berkeley in 2008. His photography, sculpture, and investigative research have examined surveillance and state secrecy since the early 2000s, from long-lens images of black-budget military sites to Mylar satellites launched into orbit. A MacArthur Fellow (2017) and winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2016), he is represented by Pace Gallery, with work held by the Guggenheim, Tate, MoMA, and the Whitney.