[2] His work primarily uses recontextualised vernacular photographs of recent historical events, found in German state archives, in order to pose questions about photography.
[3] Messmer's 2014 book Reenactments MfS uses photographs of re-enactments of escape attempts across the Berlin Wall, and crime-scene exhibits, sourced from the Stasi Records Agency.
[3] Messmer's 2016 book Zelle/Cell is about the West German far-left militant organisation the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.
The work was shown in an exhibition titled RAF: No Evidence / Kein Beweis in June 2018 at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.
The critic Gerry Badger has written that "He is not attempting to reconstruct the history but play creatively, as it were, with this fascinating, but enigmatic material.