MENNER, Simon - Top Secret. Bilde aus den Archiven der Staatssicherheit / Images from the Archives of the Stasi

"First of all, I am dumping quite a lot of material here, not because this is the way I would present my work in a show,
but rather since I think that is very important to make as much material accessible as possible." (© Simon MENNER)

"Almost 300,000 people worked for the STASI, the East German secret police, far more than are or were employed by agencies such as the CIA or the Soviet Union's KGB.
More than 50 years after the Berlin Wall was erected, German photographer Simon MENNER (b.1978) unearthed an extraordinary cache of photographs in the STASI archives
that document the agency's surveillance work.
These state-approved photographs show officers and employees posing in professional uniforms, wearing unconvincing fake beards and moustaches, or signaling to each other with their hands.

Once top secret, and now preposterous, these images are both comical and sinister. Until now, nobody has attempted a visual study of the activities of the State Security.
For Simon MENNER, the undertaking is more suited to artists and philosophers than to historians." (publisher's note, © Hatje Cantz Verlag, )

Book Review:
"A revealing and mordant book that opens the lid on the operations of the former East German secret police, so called STASI,
Simon MENNER manages to draw attention to the agency's surveillance work by re-presenting archive images. 
Photographs of personnel being taught the art of disguise – in an attempt to pass themselves off as Western tourists
– are ruefully comic, while Polaroids taken as part of clandestine house searches and used to ensure everything was left as originally found, are eerie if not extraordinary.
Menace and paranoia all but leap off the page in what is essentially a professional manual for prospective Stasi agents of a bygone era." (© Tim CLARK)