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.

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.