The German Democratic Republic undertook mass surveillance of its citizens during the period 1950–1989 undertaken by its secret police service, which took the form of documents, audio recordings, moving footage, and approximately two million photographs. In late 1989 and early 1990, citizens of the GDR stormed the offices of the Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, following a series of revolutions that shook Eastern Europe, marking the end of the postwar era and the division of Germany. Citizens occupied offices in Berlin, Leipzig, and other locations in order to halt the destruction of files by staff officials under orders to erase traces of its unlawful state surveillance actions. The regime is known for the precise rendering of its nation’s citizens in observational reports and photographic recordings and this article considers the ways in which photography was utilized by the surveillance regime to infiltrate everyday lives. Further, the article examines in what ways these photographs reveal various surveillance techniques and indicate its limits in what can be considered as inadequate or illegible photographs. Lastly, it considers the remedial possibilities of the Stasi archive and its afterlife, or extra-archival legacy via artistic mediation.