Since November 2018, the situation in the area around Eisenbahnstraße in the east of Leipzig has "finally been defused" – according to the BILD newspaper. This is where the first weapons ban zone in Saxony was established. Even before this, the police were allowed to carry out random controls in this "dangerous place". Prohibition signs have now been erected around the area and there is a fine of up to 10.000€ for carrying weapons, as well as up to 1.000€ for carrying "dangerous objects".
But the Eisenbahnstraße is also a dangerous object for any journalistic, documentary, artistic investigation. It seems impossible to take and show pictures with an unbiased view. The images are too much cemented in our minds, since Eisenbahnstraße has been in the headlines for years as a result of brawls, shootings, drug trafficking, knife attacks. Often, these acts are diffusely attributed to non-German or People of Colour.
In August 2019, we published the photo newspaper "Dangerous Object: Eisenbahnstraße", in which we counter the stigma of "the worst street in Germany" (ProSieben) with a differentiated critical picture. For this purpose, we held long conversations with residents, used video stills from relevant TV documentaries and our own bodycam recordings and photographed special places in the neighbourhood with a large-format camera. Thereby, we want to complement the image of the neighbourhood and counter those media reports and portrayals by the police with voices from the neighbourhood.
Now we want to publish a second edition – with your help. It will include further conversations with residents: We want to ask if they feel safe in the neighbourhood, how the weapons ban zone affects their everyday life and what they would like to see in in general for the life together in the neighbourhood.
In the new issue, we particularly want to give priority to the links between so-called dangerous places and displacement. To this end, we will do more research on the experiences with such processes in other cities, bring them up in our conversations and use the large-format camera to shift our focus to those places where these links have already become apparent, such as on the last wastelands in the neighbourhood. We will also continue to use the body cam and social networks to search for images that shed light on these links.