Financial Times Magazine
Darkness visible
“Haunting images of people blinded in the second world war.”
Article
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Blinde Blicke
“Der Schock, der sie versehrt hat, ist in ihre Züge eingegraben, als tiefe Narbe, als leere Augenhöhle, als verschleierter, nirgends Halt findender Blick. Und als Ausdruckskraft.”
Article (German)
Cees Nooteboom
Introduction from the book The Eyes of War.
Seeing The Invisible. On the work of Martin Roemers.
“This book is made up of inescapable stories and unforgettable faces (……). Why that is, how it happened, is written in the stories that the photographer, Martin Roemers, has captured in his spare, pared-down prose, which hits you head on because there is nothing to hide behind. (……) Roemers, with the skill of the writer that he is, has stripped away everything that might distract from that essence. (…….) because these are all frontal photographs of faces in merciless black and white, it seems as though you are walking through an endless gallery of statues in a museum of horrors, a classical antiquity where all suffering has been petrified as a lasting lament. “
Article (English / Dutch)
Audiofile (Dutch)
German Historical Museum
Video interview (English/German)
Conscientious, Joerg Colberg
“It is to be hoped that books like The Eyes of War will now also be made for the wars we either brush aside or ignore or simply pretend they didn’t even happen.”
Article
Conscientious, Joerg Colberg
Meditations on Photographs: Frederick Lennart Bentley by Martin Roemers
“You think you know, and then you don’t. You find out why you don’t know and what you need to know instead. But once you look at the photograph again, you’re being thrown back to an earlier stage, almost to the moment when you first saw this portrait. The moment you try to clarify things, the moment you really try to nail the damn thing to the wall, a wall, anything that might give it stability, certainty… everything deflates.”
Article
Sehstörungen : Grenzwerte des Visuellen in Künsten und Wissenschaften
Blinde im Blick. Martin Roemers “The Eyes of War”.
“Die Porträts veranschaulichen, wie sehr Kriege nicht nur Landschaften verwüsten, sondern auch menschliche Gesichter brutal zerfurchen können – sei es absichtlich, absichtslos oder einfach nur zufällig. So individuell die einzelnen Gesichter auch sind, zeigen sie dem Betrachter das abstrakte Gesicht des Krieges, das sich kaum darstellen lässt. Die Fotografien zeigen die grausame Brutalität des Krieges, bezeugen diese, lassen dabei jedoch den Porträtierten ihre Würde.”
Article
Vrij Nederland
De ogen van de oorlog
Article