Oliver Smithies Lecture: Stasi Surveillance: Photography’s Material and Residual Traces

Thursday 5 March 2026, 17:00
Gillis Lecture Theatre, Balliol College, Oxford
Observing suspicious suspects exchanging a bag on the street, Berlin, around 1975. MfS HA II Fo 865

Observing suspicious suspects exchanging a bag on the street, Berlin, around 1975. MfS HA II Fo 865

Professor Donna West Brett (Oliver Smithies Visiting Lecturer) will deliver an Oliver Smithies Lecture entitled ‘Stasi Surveillance: Photography’s Material and Residual Traces’

This lecture examines the entanglement of photography with the past and its potential future within a post-archival context. Specifically, it examines photographs taken by the East German Stasi from the 1960s to 1989, highlighting the extensive material and photographic residue that serve as tangible traces of surveillance activities. Through key case studies, the lecture considers photography’s multiple registers as a tool for covert surveillance and as an evidential record, which nonetheless become haunting traces of unseen surveillance forces and a testament to photography’s unsettling potential.

There will be a drinks reception in the Buttery from 18:15

All are welcome. Please RSVP to college.​office@​balliol.​ox.​ac.​uk if you would like to attend.