Publisher's Description
The photographer and political activist Miklós Klaus Rózsa was under surveillance for over twenty years by every level of the Swiss police—from the federal to the local and even the municipal. Rozsa’s photographs and the State Protection files compiled on him from 1971 to 1989 form the basis for of this book. Authors and editors Christof Nu¨ssli and Christoph Oeschger juxtapose the surveillance documents with the artist’s images. The resulting collage produces a new context that reveals the history of this politically-charged time in Switzerland. The two lines of narration could not be more antithetical. On the one hand the images by Rózsa document the political protests and the Zurich youth movement of the 1980s; on the other, the police surveillance files demonstrate their distanced and often uncomprehending gaze. The question lingers: Are we not already in the grips of Big Brother?