Social scientist, artist, writer, and provocateur, Paglen has been exploring the secret activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies--the "black world"--for the last eight years, publishing, speaking, and making astonishing photographs. As an artist, Paglen is interested in the idea of photography as truth-telling, but his mysterious, compelling pictures stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. Invisible highlights the array of tactics used by Paglen to depict both what can and cannot be seen.

Watched reflects on the complexities of contemporary surveillance, from technologies used by state authorities to everyday monitoring practices. Artists include Meri Alg n Ringborg, Jason E. Bowman, James Bridle, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Tina Enghoff, Alberto Frigo, Mishka Henner, Marco Poloni, Ann-Sofi Sid n and Hito Steyerl.

Since the rise of the photographic medium in the late 19th century, people have been fascinated by the camera's ability to record striking moments both public and private. From Mathew Brady's haunting images of the Civil War to the present day paparazzi's brand of voyeurism-for-hire, photography has long served to capture not only the posed portrait but also the personal, the intimate, the unexpected, and the taboo. This fascinating book examines the ways in which acts of voyeurism and surveillance have inspired, challenged, and expanded the medium of photography throughout its evolution.

Few phenomena are as formative of our experience of the visual world as displays of suffering. But what does it mean to have an ethical experience of disturbing or traumatizing images? What kind of ethical proposition does an image of pain mobilize? How may the spectator learn from and make use of the painful image as a source of ethical reflection? Engaging with a wide range of visual media--from painting, theatre, and sculpture, to photography, film, and video--this interdisciplinary collection of essays by leading and emerging scholars of visual culture offers a reappraisal of the increasingly complex relationship between images of pain and the ethics of viewing.

Photographs are used as documents, records and evidence every day in courtrooms and hospitals, on passports and driving licences. But how did photographs come to be established and accepted, what sort of agencies and institutions have the power to enforce this status and, more generally, what concept of photographic representation is entailed and what are its consequences? In addressing such issues, John Tagg traces a previously unexamined history which has profound implications not only for the theory and practice of conventionally separated areas of amateur, professional, technical, documentary and art photography, but also for the understanding of the role of photography in processes of modern social regulation.