Detention and the Limits of Vision in David Taylor’s COMPLEX

• In Event: Sensing Infrastructure: Perception, Politics, and Media of the US-Mexico Border

Abstract

David Taylor’s photographic series COMPLEX uses drone imagery to create vivid, otherworldly landscapes of migrant detention centers across the U.S. Southwest. The architecture of the majority of the centers recalls that of other, more commercial forms of infrastructure: the warehouse and the shopping mall. Most are situated in rural areas; Taylor composes the images so that viewers can see the landscape: plains, grasslands, crops, and the hints of a vast road network connecting them all. From the drone’s-eye view, these sites appear empty, devoid of the human figure. Yet these detention centers are governed by a complex set of regulations, including those that govern air space and drone movement. In these terms, Taylor’s work can be read not only as a series of still images, but as an act of mapping. His presence, and that of the drones, mark the limits of public access to these secretive sites. His identity – as an Anglo, cisgender male artist – enables him to occupy these limits without fear of retribution.

It is tempting to place Taylor’s series in dialogue with the long-range photography of Trevor Paglen, whose work has come to stand in for a model of citizen sousveillance. Yet I argue here that COMPLEX is first and foremost a border piece, and can be read more productively in tandem with border and migration studies. Thus this paper argues for an understanding of Taylor’s series as situated within overlapping forms of infrastructure: 1) the structures of detention and incarceration that mark the extent of U.S. empire, 2) the commercial and industrial infrastructure that connect these sites and mirror their aesthetics, and 3) the legal apparatus that positions detention centers, and the migrants they house, beyond the limits of civilian vision. I position Taylor’s work within a theoretical apparatus that includes Camilla Fojas’s work on “border optics,” Rebecca Schrieber’s theorization of migration and visibility, and Curtis Stubblefield’s analysis of drone vision.

Author

• Ila Nicole Sheren, Washington University In St Louis