Security Matter (C) - A Portrait of Surveillance

  • Author
  • Publisher
    Self-Published
  • Designer
    Hemza Hajyousif
  • Link
  • Pages
    63
  • Dimensions
    .375in x 10.25in x 0.5in
  • Published
    December 2024

A photo book that draws directly from the nearly 400 pages of my grandmother's FBI file.

My grandmother, Norma Spector, was surveilled between 1949 and 1978 for her involvement in the Communist Party, Federation of Greek Maritime Unions, Women Strike for Peace, Brooklyn Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and the National Negro Congress. The “C” in “Security Matter C” stood for “communist.”

The book aims to illuminate and critique the government’s surveillance of people, its own citizens, advocating for equality and peace by appropriating pages directly from the file and recontextualizing them through the lens of family history. The left-hand pages feature the FBI’s portrait of my grandmother, and the right-hand pages feature images of my grandmother from our family archive. The book was designed to evoke a government file. Each spread is split in half, forcing the reader to use both hands to engage with the book fully. 

This project was made possible by the 2024 Eureka! & Penumbra Foundation Risograph Residency. Each copy was printed and bound by the artist.