While photographing and shooting a video of NSA infrastructures in Germany for Laura Poitras’ film Citizenfour, I was stopped and interrogated by police and military on a nearly daily basis. Although what I was doing was perfectly legal, the military still insisted on harassing me while I was doing my job. My response was to dream up the Eagle-Eye Photo Contest, an amateur photography contest to take place in Germany to see who could take the most interesting pictures of NSA bases in continental Europe.
I partnered with Franziska Nori at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and we launched the contest. Over a hundred photographers participated.
Image: NSA/GCHQ Surveillance Base, Bude, Cornwall, UK, 2014
Photo: Uwe Dettmer