BY NORMAN BORDEN | Tomas van Houtryve is a photographer on a mission to bring the drone war home, and raise awareness of the growing use of photography in surveillance, spying, and targeting.
The result of his commitment is “Blue Sky Days,” a thought-provoking exhibition whose large images of America were created by using a consumer drone he bought online for a few hundred dollars. “With a bit of tinkering,” he explained, “I was able to add a high resolution camera and a system for transmitting live video back to the ground — a greatly simplified version of the system that American pilots use to guide military drones over foreign airspace.”
Starting in 2013, with the help of a Getty Images grant, he visited 35 states over a two-year period and flew his drone over weddings, funerals, and groups of people exercising or praying — the kind of gatherings that have been subjected to US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. He also flew the drone over some domestic settings where US government surveillance drones have been used — prisons, oil fields, and parts of the US-Mexican border.
“Blue Sky Days” is, van Houtryve said, “the story of a 2013 drone attack that really affected me, the story of a 13-year-old boy in Pakistan who watched his 67-year-old grandmother get killed by a Hellfire missile. When the boy testified in front of Congress nine months later, he said, ‘I no longer love blue skies, I prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.’ ”
“By creating these images,” the artist explained, “I aim to draw attention to the changing nature of personal privacy, surveillance, and contemporary warfare… I want people to rethink drones; I want people to get into their minds that as Americans, they could be watched by a drone.”
In researching his project, van Houtryve obtained drone war information by looking at strike reports from the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. With this data, he created a shot list and began to seek out settings and events he could find in the United States (such as outdoor weddings and funerals). Then, by using captions from the strike reports and his research, he connected many of his own drone photographs of what look like typical domestic scenes, albeit from about six stories up, with actual US military strikes overseas. In effect, he brought the drone war home, illustrating how mistakes — sometimes deadly ones — can happen when US military drone pilots sitting in a trailer in Las Vegas or New Mexico zero in on a target that they perceive to be exhibiting a “signature behavior” (a suspicious pattern of behavior or “signature” perceived to be that of terrorists, which the CIA or military use as criteria in deciding whether to attack a target).
For example, in his image “Wedding, 2013,” van Houtryve came across an outdoor wedding in Philadelphia by chance while on another assignment. “I was at the top of the Rocky Stairs [at the Philadelphia Museum of Art] and saw the wedding going on below, and sent the drone over it.” In the 40×60 inch print, the caption states, “In December 2013, a US drone reportedly struck a wedding in Radda, in central Yemen, killing twelve people and injuring fourteen.” Looking at this photo, it’s hard to imagine how a drone pilot could have categorized a wedding celebration as “signature behavior.”
In showing how government drones can also be involved in domestic surveillance, photojournalism becomes art. In “Heat Signature, 2014,” a drone photo captures countless houseboats moored along the drought-affected shoreline of Bidwell Canyon in California; the accompanying caption connects it by stating, “Global Hawk drones based at nearby Beale Air Force Base can survey as much as 40,000 square miles of terrain per day.”
The photographer’s goal of using drone technology to look at America the way we look at other countries is well-realized in the stunning 40×60 inch image of civilian cadets in formation at the venerable Citadel Military College in Charleston, SC. The cadets are faceless and dehumanized because they’re bathed in deep shadows. That’s all the drone can see, which makes the caption for “Military Age Males, 2015” all the more foreboding. It states (in what sounds like government-speak): “The method used by the US government for assessing civilian casualties of drone strikes abroad counts all military-age males within a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit posthumous proof of their innocence.” That said, it seems very possible for a drone pilot to fire on a target that can’t be positively identified as a combatant, so empathy is not an issue.
Other drone images in the exhibition also effectively tie in strike reports. “Funeral, 2014” shows grave diggers preparing for a funeral in Colma, CA, which is San Francisco’s burial ground. The accompanying caption: “In 2009, a drone strike on a funeral in South Waziristan reportedly killed 60 Pakistani civilians.” Get close, and you can read the names on the tombstones.
Van Houtryve’s work has already been widely recognized. In fact, Harper’s Magazine published some of his drone work in April 2014 (the largest photo essay in the magazine’s 164-year history). “Blue Sky Days” is comprised of only 13 images — but their combined effect is powerful, delivering a message that can’t be ignored.
Through Dec. 31 at Anastasia Photo (143 Ludlow St., btw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.). Hours: Tues.–Sun., 11am–7pm. Call 212-677-9725 or visit anastasia-photo.com.
