The images are part of Maisel's Proving Ground series comprised of aerial photographs made at the classified military installation of Dugway Proving Ground, a remote site in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert devoted to testing and development of chemical and biological weapons and defense systems. The images depict test grids inscribed into the desert floor where toxic substances are detonated by the military. The landscape becomes a measuring device against which dispersal rates, toxicity levels, and threats to the human body are measured.

Maisel states "The aerial images I have created of Dugway’s test grids are themselves gridded. A template is inscribed over the space of the photograph, much as land is gridded for cartographic purposes. Two different systems of rendering are made to overlap, creating a third system offering multiple angles of view and possibilities for interpretation. We tend to attribute to the aerial view a kind of panoptical strategy of power. The aerial view exploits the position of privilege. And yet, this form of observation is a partial way of apprehending reality, and what remains unseen in these images is as critical as what is visible."