CDS keeps an eye on the spies

A group of ordinary people-plagued with expressions of awe, fear and tension-stare intently out of the frame at an unseen monitor. Those looking at this particular photograph can't help but wonder: what is behind it?

According to William Noland-the artist behind the image-and Trevor Paglen, the source behind the screen is America's illusive-yet-pervasive Big Brother, exposed in their newest collection, Scenes of Secrecy: Visual Studies on Suspicion, Intelligence, and Security.

On display at the Center for Documentary Studies, the exhibit explores how the government and other officials obtain knowledge from companies, terrorist suspects, foreigners and even U.S. citizens in the name of security.

Noland, associate professor of the practice of visual arts, and Paglen, an artist and writer in the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley, explore whether the surveillance is justified.

The exhibit showcases photographs, videos and testimonies across two floors. The top level focuses on the private sphere of average citizens. Although the number of topics covered is ambitious, this portion still succeeds in illustrating a broad picture of our current breach of privacy. Highlights include a series of eight monitors, each showing clips of common people captured in seemingly unsuspecting places such as supermarket aisles and living rooms.

Sponsored by North Carolina Stop Torture Now, the lower floor presents Stay Behind the Line, a look into the torture methods experienced here and abroad. At the bottom of the staircase behind a yellow security line, a makeshift body lays bound and gagged underneath a set of detainee photos. Several of these images are darkened silhouettes of prisoners, reinforcing the ambiguous nature of the ways intelligence is collected.

The theme continues with Camp Diaries, Nolan's documentary on photojournalist Dorothea Lange's images of Japanese internment camps in the 1940s.

Although striking in appearance, the exhibit is somewhat vague overall. Still, the works on display parallel the shades of gray that characterize the current state of surveillance.