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David Maisel: Proving Ground

CAE1802

Summary Note

Proving Ground is David Maisel’s investigation through photographs and time-based media of Dugway Proving Ground, a classified site covering nearly 800,000 acres in a remote region of Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert. Materials include research materials, work prints, digital images, correspondence, and exhibition ephemera.

Biographical Note

David Maisel (b. 1961, New York) is an artist working in photography and video, and the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts. Among his chief concerns are the politics and aesthetics of radically human-altered environments, and how we perceive our place in time via investigations of cultural artifacts from both past and present. His work focuses on power and the production of space by examining landscapes and objects that are off-limits, quarantined, or hidden from view. Maisel received his BA from Princeton University, and his MFA from California College of the Arts, in addition to study at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He resides in San Francisco, CA. He is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, NY; Haines Gallery, San Francisco; Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston; and Ivorypress Gallery, Madrid. For over thirty years, Maisel has produced aerial photographs of compromised landscapes in a multi-chaptered series titled Black Maps, revealing the physical impact of activities such as mining, logging, urban sprawl, and military testing. Rather than create literal documents, the artist has exploited the slippage between the evidentiary and aesthetic functions of photography. The resulting images subvert cartographic mapping, instead occupying a zone both imaginative and descriptive, informed by the politics of land use. His current project, Proving Ground, utilizes photography and time-based media to investigate Dugway Proving Ground, a classified military installation in the Utah desert devoted to the development and testing of chemical and biological weapons and defense systems.

In projects such as Library of Dust and History’s Shadow, Maisel investigates institutional archives, and shows the power of objects to convey meaning over time. Library of Dust depicts one hundred copper canisters from the Oregon State Hospital, each containing the cremated remains of a psychiatric patient unclaimed after death. The canisters have reacted with their ashen remains, causing mineral encrustations to bloom on their metallic surfaces. The project helped initiate a major architectural rehabilitation of the hospital, which dates from the 1880’s. In History’s Shadow, Maisel uses x-rays depicting sculpture, painting, and artifacts from antiquity as source material in the creation of new photographic artwork. Through the re-photography of these scientific records from the Getty Museum and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Maisel subjects these objects from antiquity to a process of transmutation, allowing them to become reanimated and renewed.

Maisel is the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts; a 2011 Investing in Artists Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation; a 2008 Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts; a 2007 Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute; a 1990 Individual Artists Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; and a 1984 Francis LeMoyne Page Award in the Visual Arts from Princeton University. Maisel was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 in 2015 and was a finalist for the 2008 Prix Pictet Award in Photography and the 2008 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Maisel has been a Trustee of the Headlands Center for the Arts since 2011 and serves on the California College of the Arts President’s Alumni Council.

Scope and Content

An encounter with one of the most secretive of American military zones, Proving Ground is David Maisel’s investigation through photographs and time-based media of Dugway Proving Ground, a classified site covering nearly 800,000 acres in a remote region of Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert. From its inception during World War II to the present day, Dugway’s primary mission has been to develop and test chemical and biological weaponry and defense programs. After more than a decade of inquiry, Maisel was granted rare access to photograph the terrain, testing facilities, and other aspects of this deliberately obscured region of the American atlas.

Arrangement

This archive is organized into three series that are arranged according to project phases, although series 1, the research phase, continued throughout the project.
  • Series 1: Research
  • Series 2: Actualization
  • Series 3: Outcomes

Inclusive Dates

1998-2019

Bulk Dates

2014-2017

Quantity / Extent

.25 cubic feet

Language

English

Related Archive Collections

  • CAE1215: Mark Klett and William L. Fox: The Half-life of History

Related Publications

Baillargeon, Claude. Shadows of the Invisible. Rochester, MI: Oakland University Art Gallery, Department of Art and Art History, College of Arts and Sciences, 2014.

Bradley, John, ed., Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2000.

Brown, Andrew. Art & Ecology Now. London, England: Thames & Hudson, 2014.

Hood, Charles. The half-life of Salt: Voices of the Enola Gay. Orcutt, CA: Fountain Mountain Press, 2002.

Klett, Mark, and William L. Fox. The Half-life of History: The Atomic Bomb and Wendover Air Base. Santa Fe, NM: Radius Books, 2011.

Maisel, David, Ann Wilkes Tucker, and Von Lintel Gallery. Terminal Mirage. S.I., s.n., 2005.

Maisel, David, Geoff Manaugh, Terry Toedtemeier, and Michael S. Roth. Library of Dust. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2008.

Maisel, David, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, and Von Lintel Gallery. Oblivion. Portland, OR: Nazraeli Press/JGS, 2006.

Maisel, David, and University of Colorado Boulder. Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2013.

Maisel, David. Proving Ground: David Maisel. Santa Fe NM: Radius Books; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, 2019.

Maisel, David. The Lake Project. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli Press, 2004.

Container Listing by Series:

CAE1802/1 Series 1: Research, 1998-2018

Series 1 contains artist information and research materials.

  • ARCH-FILE 17-1

    • 1-1 Artist Information, 2018
    • 1-2 Subject Research, 1998-2002
    • 1-3 Proving Ground Research, 2003-2013
    • 1-4 Jack Rabbit Test Program Research, 2011-2017
    • 1-5 Live Anthrax Shipment Incident Research, 2015-2016

CAE1802/2 Series 2: Actualization, 2013-2016

Series 2 contains materials relevant to the actualization of the project including correspondence, logistical information, and flight coordination.

  • ARCH-FILE 17-1

    • 2-1 Correspondence, 2013-2016
    • 2-2 Travel and Tour Logistics, 2014
    • 2-3 Aerial Flight Coordination, 2014

CAE1802/3 Series 3: Outcomes, 2014-2019

Series 3 contains materials and information created after the visit to Proving Ground in Dugway, Utah. Materials include artist statements, photographic prints, book and portfolio information, exhibition information and ephemera, and press materials.

  • ARCH-FILE 17-1

    • 3-1 Project Artist Statements, 2015-2018
    • 3-2 Reference Prints, 2014
    • 3-3 Proving Ground Albumen Print Portfolio, 2017
    • 3-4 Kydoimos Video, 2017
    • 3-5 Proving Ground Book Production, 2018-2019
    • 3-6 Haines Gallery Exhibition, January 4 – February 24, 2018, 2017-2018
    • 3-7 Project Press Materials, 2017

Additional Materials

  • Archive S-Box 25

    • 3-2#1 Air Force Target Grid Building 1 (4259_01), 2014
    • 3-2#2 Air Force Target Grid Building 2 (4259_05), 2014
    • 3-2#3 Air Force Target Grid Building 3 (4259_07), 2014
    • 3-2#4 Air Force Target Grid Building 4 (4259_09), 2014
    • 3-2#5 Air Force Target Grid Building 5 (4259_12_2), 2014
    • 3-2#6 Air Force Target Grid Building 6 (4259_03), 2014
    • 3-2#7 Referee Module Interior (5370_04), Whole System Live Agent Test Laboratory, 2014
    • 3-2#8 Aerosol Dissemination Chamber (5367_06), Whole System Live Agent Test Chamber, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, 2014
    • 3-2#9 Aerosol Generation Module, Whole System Live Agent Test Chamber, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, 2014
    • 3-2#10 Referee Module Exterior, Whole System Live Agent Test Chamber, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, 2014
    • 3-2#11 Referee Module Exterior, Whole System Live Agent Test Chamber, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, 2014
    • 3-2#12 Tower Grid, 2014
    • 3-2#13 Target S Grid_11 (5359_06), 2014
    • 3-2#14 Downwind Grid_04 (5357_03), 2014
    • 3-2#15 South Ballistics Grid_01 (5360_01), 2014
    • 3-2#16 Tower Grid_02 (5350_04), 2014
    • 3-2#17 West Vertical Grid_04 (5362_02), 2014
    • 3-2#18 South Ballistics Grid_04 (5361_02), 2014
    • 3-2#19 Horizontal Grid_01 (5343_05), 2014
    • 3-2#20 Visual Guidance Pattern_02 (5340_03), 2014
    • 3-2#21 Rope Grid_01 (5341_04), 2014
    • 3-2#22 Visual Guidance Pattern_07 (5340_09), 2014
    • 3-2#23 West Vertical Grid_01 (5342_08), 2014