ABSTRACT
Photographs held in the Stasi archive of the former East German Security Service in Berlin record the mass surveillance activities of the regime and document traces of attempted or successful escapes from the German Democratic Republic as part of an evidentiary process. These meticulous records include precise accounts of surveillance activities, which take the form of documents, audio recordings, moving footage and approximately two million photographs. The function of these photographic records as evidence is often undone by poor photographic practices, blurry or damaged images, which are further complicated by the attempted destruction of the records in 1989 at the end of the regime. Furthermore, material supplied to researchers is redacted or pixilated, and in so doing meaning is obscured and the remedial possibilities of public dissemination are impeded. This chapter considers the material properties of photographs in the Stasi archive that have been subject to material violence.
