Photography has always been a very useful tool for government agencies, and this includes, of course, secret services. German artist Simon Menner got access to the archives of the former East German Ministry of State Security - widely known as STASI, an agency notorious for its ruthlessness. As it turns out, the STASI’s archives are filled with photography (btw, they had a very high demand for Polaroid film). Simon compiled some of the photographs, with some explanatory text added, to share them on this site as Images from the secret STASI archives. Given what these images were used for it’s somewhat hard to write “Enjoy!”, but the absurdity of some of these photographs (the above demonstrates a secret hand signal) might make you laugh regardless.