ABSTRACT
The photographic document has invariably imagined and experienced itself as constrained: constrained by the index, constrained by pictorialism, constrained by photographic two-dimensionality, and constrained by photographic spontaneity, but most acutely and paradoxically constrained by photography's truth-telling powers itself. In turn, the photographs themselves are unsettling in a visceral way, and also unsettle the ways in which we anticipate the function of evidential records. Photographs in the Stasi archive, however, were taken with a different purpose, and rather than chronicling world events, they were often taken in secret for the purposes of surveillance or evidence, and with a specific sanctioned audience in mind. The acts of observation, of note taking, of photographing, or indeed of drawing sketches of escape routes all contribute to building layers of evidence by the Stasi for the purposes of prosecution and for the prevention of further barrier breaks from the GDR.
