Negative Publicity

We are delighted to be able to offer a special version of the second printing of “Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition” by Crofton Black and Edmund Clark, published by Aperture.

We have 100 copies of the book for sale accompanied by a screenprint exclusive to Here Press. The screenprint, shown below, is a reproduction of a page from the CIA Inspector General’s Special Review on Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities. It is reproduced at the size of the original – US letter (8.5 x 11 inches) – and is stamped, numbered and signed on the reverse by the authors. Copies of the book with the special edition screenprint are available at the regular price of the standard edition. This book was the winner of the Arles Photo-Text Book Award, 2016, and the project was the recipient of the 2017 Infinity Award for Documentary and Photojournalism.

Photographs by Edmund Clark and a paper trail of documents assembled by counterterrorism investigator Crofton Black are interwoven in a complex structure in order to confront the nature of contemporary warfare and the invisible mechanisms of state control. From George W. Bush’s 2001 declaration of the ‘war on terror,’ until 2008, an unknown number of people disappeared into a network of secret prisons organised by the US Central Intelligence Agency – transfers without legal process, otherwise known as extraordinary rendition. No public record was kept as these prisoners were shuttled all over the globe. Some were eventually sent to Guantánamo Bay or released, while others remain unaccounted for.

The paper trail assembled in ‘Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition’ shows these activities via the weak points of business accountability: invoices, documents of incorporation, and billing reconciliations produced by the small-town American businesses enlisted in prisoner transportation. Clark has travelled worldwide to photograph former detention sites, detainees’ homes, and government locations. He and Black recreate the network that links CIA ‘black sites,’ and evoke ideas of opacity, surface, and testimony in relation to this process: a system hidden in plain sight. The book raises fundamental questions about the accountability and complicity of our governments, and the erosion of our most basic civil rights. Includes an essay by Eyal Weizman, Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures.

216 x 297 mm, 292pp
36 colour photographs and 83 black and white and colour documents
Texts by Crofton Black, Edmund Clark and Eyal Weizman
Printed offset litho on coated FSC and uncoated FSC paper
Spiral bound hardback with cloth spine
This edition, with screenprint: 100 copies