Critical Collection: Image Intelligence and Empire

Images mediate political operations, public and covert. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the most significant events of 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. Critical Collection is an assemblage of declassified archival photographs and other found images processed and re-contextualized by artist and researcher Evan Hume. He obtains this source material primarily from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Archives, and National Reconnaissance Office. With photographic intelligence gathering at its core, Hume’s work expands centrifugally, making unexpected visual and conceptual connections that form a complex web of fact and speculation. Hume employs 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.

Evan Hume is an artist and educator living in Ames, Iowa, where he is Assistant Professor of Photography at Iowa State University. He earned his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and MFA  from George Washington Univeristy. Raised in the Washington, DC area, Hume's approach to photography is informed by the experience of living in the nation’s political center for much of his life and focuses on the medium’s use as an instrument of the military-industrial complex. He has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions and his work has been featured by publications such as Aperture, Der Greif, Financial Times, and Fisheye. Hume’s first monograph, Viewing Distance, was published by Daylight Books in 2021.

Lily Brewer holds a Ph.D. in History of Art and Architecture from the University of Pittsburgh specializing in modern and contemporary portrait and landscape photography in the United States southwest. Studying the concurrent development between photographic and weapon technologies, Brewer traces the contours of visual culture and history as it relates to war operations, military preparedness, conflict, and weapons testing during and after the Second World War and its visual articulations today. She is editor-in-chief and founder of sedimenta.org.