Noorderlicht Photogallery Akerkhof 12 9711 JB Groningen Pays-Bas
Since 2001 Jeroen Kramer has been active as a photojournalist in the Middle East. His photos of the hard news from this region found their way into international media. But Kramer had enough of fast journalistic work. He went in search of intimacy and beauty, and sought refuge in autonomous photography. Together with the book of the same title, Room 103 affords an insight into the complex and schizophrenic reality of a photographer who lives and works in a conflict zone.
After a stay of three years in Syria Jeroen Kramer then lived and worked four years in Beirut. There, and from there as a base, he constantly had opportunities to shoot news images. But Kramer himself saw increasingly less sense in doing so. How often were these photos, taken at great risk, simply used in service of one-dimensional reporting about the region? Jeroen Kramer reached the point that he no longer could look at his own photographs, and with that could no longer make any more. He was obsessed with the question of what a photograph was really worth. A thousand words, as they say in journalism? Your self-respect? Your name? Your life? No, Kramer concluded, and shifted his role as a photographer from that of a narrator to that of an interrogator. Searching for images of affection, intimacy and beauty in a Middle East torn by conflicts redirected his approach to a more poetic, autonomous way of working. With that his career as a photojournalist came to an end. Room 103 is the result of this inner struggle in which Jeroen Kramer tries to recognise the human weaknesses, aesthetic limitations and remorseless insights of the path he has chosen.