Artist Mishka Henner‘s current solo show at the Carroll/Fletcher gallery in London features aerial images of Fifty-One US Military Outposts.
Overt and covert military outposts used by the United States in fifty-one different countries across the world. Sites located and gathered from information available in the public domain, official US military and veterans’ websites and forums, domestic and foreign news articles, and official and leaked government documents and reports.
The Black Diamond exhibition also features his beautiful/disgusting images of oilfields and feed lots (we did posted about it here) culled by “exploiting loopholes in the vast archives of data, imagery and information that are now accessible to us, connecting the dots to reveal things that surround us but which we rarely see or don’t want to see.” We Make Money Not Art compares it to the work of Edward Burtynsky, Trevor Paglen, Omer Fast, Michael Wolf and Jon Rafman. True that. Henner recently told ArtInfo:
The internet is full of loopholes and leaks. I remember one day Hilary Clinton had categorically stated: ‘we have no US military presence in Honduras.’ However, the next day I was on Panoramio and was looking around pictures from Honduras – sure enough there was a photograph of a native Honduran worker with his arm around a sergeant major from the US cavalry regiment. The Honduran had even written to all his mates talking about how happy was to have got a job on this US military base. So the internet is full of these really simple leaks that completely contradict statements made by very powerful organisations.
See US military outposts that definitely exist (and will be available as archival inkjet prints) in Pakistan (27°50’52”N 65°9’40”E), Japan (35°17’32”N 139°39’35”E), Bahrain (26°12’21”N 50°36’40”E) and Alice Springs, Australia (23°47’53”S 133°44’12”E). “Black Diamond,” Mishka Henner, Apr 25 – May 31, Carroll/Fletcher, London
