In this episode, Trevor Paglen takes photographs for his Limit Telephotography series from the edge of the Tonopah Test Range, a classified military site in the Nevada desert. By attaching a telescope to his camera through a special lens, Paglen is able to photograph military structures and classified aircraft from publicly accessible land many miles away.

Because of atmospheric conditions such as convection waves and dust, the images are distorted and often unidentifiable. As a result, Paglen says he is not only photographing something at an extreme distance but also “photographing the limitations of one’s own vision.”

In referencing the highly descriptive titles he gives to each photograph, Paglen says, “It’s not clear to me that images really mean anything other than the meanings we attribute to them.”