25/02/2026
Storytelling: creating and crafting stories — both visual and written drives everything we teach and preach at Wide Angle Creative. Wayne Richards is a perfect example of this. Before he joined us for our Berlin & Hamburg workshop last winter, he came with an idea—a project on the Stasi, the Germany secret police (1950 - 1990). With documentation and a strong concept, Wayne takes us into a world of spies and surveillance.
We’ve chosen a few of his images and spreads to highlight. We’re looking forward to hearing about what Wayne has in mind for his Japan project, as he’ll be joining us in April.
Here is what Wayne has to say about his work:
The concept for A Thousand Eyes originated from my interest in spy fiction, especially the works of John le Carré and Len Deighton, which portray Cold War Berlin as a city marked by division and pervasive surveillance. This literary foundation prompted me to move beyond fiction, engaging with the physical sites and archival remnants of the Stasi, as well as the procedural and administrative mechanisms through which its authority operated.
I incorporated a fictional narrative to guide the reader through the work, offering a flexible connective structure instead of a traditional storyline. Presented as diary entries, the text mirrors the fragmentary nature of the Stasi archive, with information disclosed in small segments that parallel the gradual accumulation of surveillance data.
The completion of the project demanded sustained research, multiple site visits, and a willingness to engage with uncertainty. I selected a zine format to evoke samizdat and other self-published Eastern Bloc texts circulated during the Cold War, which were characterized by anonymity and informal distribution. In this context, the zine functions both as a vessel and as a metaphor for circulation, control, and the persistent endurance of unofficial histories.
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