Through a document analysis of archival materials, I explore visual landscapes of graffiti that were produced by the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry for State Security photographers in Leipzig between 1980 and 1989 in this recent paper in Territory, Politics, Governance . Capturing visual dissent through forensic photography and its subsequent displacement from public view are two entwined territorial practices that appear to concern aesthetics yet are inherently political. Four selected photographs illustrate my main findings: First, a logic of invisibilisation as a means of deterritorialisation, and second, contradictions in MfS photo practices that highlight the contingent character of repairs to the brittle architecture of state sovereignty in the late GDR.
Published as part of the Hybrid Sovereignty Assemblages: From Liberal to Illiberal and Beyond RTEP special issue edited by Diane E. Davis and Frank I. Müller. Online first, open access at https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2024.2419367
Image: Detail of a file page contained in special operation file ‘OV Müll’, June 1989. MfS BV Leipzig XX 2252, Vol. 1: 69 – detail. Courtesy of BArch Federal Archive, Leipzig.