In 1870-1871, during the siege of Paris, better known as the Paris Commune, several ingenious actions were carried out throughout the year to continue the communards’ defense first against the Prussians, then the Thiers government, which sought to suppress the resistance within the heart of Paris. Both of these actions were the result of harnessing the air and wind, and both featured photography to some degree—first, the escape of Léon Gambetta from the city via balloon over the Prussian offensive line to get information to the interior government in an exchange of letters facilitated by the significant and well-known phoitographer Nadar, with the use of his Le Géant balloon which he photographed Paris from the sky from often.

The second act involving air and photography arose from a similar need to exchange news and information between the besieged communards and the outside world. Communards began exchanging information with the central government through a series of microphotographs attached to the legs of pigeons during the siege. The winged carriers of bad news would fly over the Prussian troops, similar to Le Géant, attempting to exchange information through clandestine flights over the armaments, securing information networks. However, pragmatic or desultory can be found on existing documents fromt the time. On a secondary note, there is a history of war pigeon communication lines illustrated across several books, notably regarding the First World War. It is a fascinating, if slightly anorak conversation.

Further conversations about the dispensation of communication and propaganda can be found during most wars of the Twentieth Century. Notably, there were vast amounts of pamphlet drops during WWII from Japan to American naval men in the Philippines, and later propaganda from the American air force to the Vietnamese and vice versa. Chinese, Russian, American, and other colonial and indigenous forces have used a vast and experimental means to connect with both the enemy and friendly sides during and after the theater of war and death have been orchestrated.

Jens Klein’s Balloons, published by Spector Books, is but one in a series of conversations regarding the distribution of propaganda throughout East Germany during and after the Cold War. Germany, particularly the divide between East/West, is a fascinating and multi-layered story that, for brevity, cannot be fully explored in this review. It is a story full of operations, counter-operations, spies, walls, death, propaganda, and a frankly miserable moment when two domineering ideologies played out in real-time in one swath of land in Germany. The repercussions of that enduring decades-long moment feel oddly apprehensive, even from the future, as tensions are at their highest since the fall of the wall between Western and Russian interests. On top of that, we find ourselves in a moment where communication cannot be trusted. The burgeoning field of AI, systems of control, Palantir, and the general state of censorship serve as a potent reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same, well…

With Balloons, there is an enigma to the mystery of the work. Reportedly, the images, archival in nature, found in the book stem from plastic weather balloons landing in East Germany during the Cold War. Attached to these balloons were Western propaganda meant to be read and distributed by the East German people. Of course, in such an environment, no matter where one’s sympathies lie, these objects were possibly to be avoided like the plague for fear of incriminating oneself against the state and potentially being held accountable for such objects landing on one’s roof or yard. So, in the event of such a sighting, the witness undoubtedly phoned Comrade Schulz or a similar magistrate to remove the object that dropped from the sky, and these are part of the records of potentially deadly weather-driven balloons.

What makes Klein’s book particularly interesting is the use of coordinates and reporting that marks the incident as a type of index, moving the work through the paradigms of typology and indexicality, and retrofitting it through the lens of Cold War history. With its anecdotal reporting in the background, it is simple and effective, yet conveys the stark anxiety of the times through an object otherwise associated with joy (children) or fascination and intrepidness (Jules Verne). This is a fantastic follow-up to the author’s Sunset book, which explores tunnels and escape routes through the Berlin Wall (Also Spectator Books). For Fans of Arwed Messmer and Astrid Proll. Highly recommended.