Petra Gerschner's series red zones brings together works created between 2001 and 2012. Among these is a group of photographs taken at the international protests against the 2009 NATO summit in Strasbourg, during which France’s then-president Nicolas Sarkozy declared the historic city center a “red zone” and international fashion chains barricaded their display windows with panels made of solid wood and metal. The thousands of demonstrators who defied Sarkozy’s ban by taking to the streets inside the officially forbidden zone were attacked by special police forces with CS gas grenades, and these photos show the demonstrators as mere shadows amidst the fog of stun grenades and tear gas.

One also sees pictures from protests in Salzburg (where the city center was designated a red zone during the 2001 World Economic Forum), as well as in London and Athens.

We now see so-called red zones being set up all over the world, wherever important conferences of the world’s powerful individuals takes place—be they G8 summit meetings, meetings of the IMF and World Bank, of NATO, or of the World Economic Forum (WEF). These are militarily secured areas inside of which democratic rights such as freedom of the press and the right to demonstrate are rendered null and void. In Germany, the term “red zone” comes from military usage: a well-known example of this was the area near the “Siegfried Line” installations along the former border of the Reich during the Second World War, with an emphasis on the state of Rhineland-Palatinate’s international border. In this area, which was shaded in red on operational maps, special military measures were in effect.

In France, the areas traditionally referred to as zones rouges (red zones) are those that witnessed the main battles of the First World War—conflicts of attrition involving massive deployments of men and materiel. Even today, it can still be risky to enter these areas, since there are still large amounts of unexploded ordnance and poison gas buried beneath the surface.