A few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a modified X-ray machine was found in the photo room of the STASI prison in Gera. Shortly thereafter, it mysteriously disappeared, but a series of photographs taken at the time of its discovery shows the device installed behind a curtain, at head height, just behind the posing chair. These photographs dredged up the memory of several contemporary witnesses from different MfS detention centres. They stressed the peculiarity of the mug shot sessions: the operator’s long absences and a constant humming sound. Years later, prominent dissidents contracted rare types of cancers, suspected to have been caused by directed X-rays as part of the STASI’s “decomposition” methods. While the official investigation could not confirm this assumption, the presence of the X-ray machine in the photo room continues to draw speculations, fuelled by a blurring line between reality and fiction.
Focusing on the X-ray machine’s view point, this series of portraits draws on photography and radiography’s capacity to account for the visible for one and the invisible for the other.