Top Secret: Images from the Stasi Archives
Berlin-based artist Simon Menner spent two years reseaching the files of the Federal Comissioner for the Stasi Archives of the former GDR to unearth the photographs he has gathered for this dark but unavoidably comic volume. Menner’s collection focuses on images pulled from manuals dealing with espionage tradecraft, as well as actual photos from surveillance operations. […] That these photographs of fake mustaches, hand signals, and close-combat techniques all smack of the risibly ersatz doesn’t dimish their eerie power: The Stasi, despite its flat-footed training handbooks, proved effective enough. —Albert Mobilio