Martin Roemers

Martin Roemers (the Netherlands, 1962) studied photography at the Academy of Arts in Enschede. He has exhibited all over the world and his work can be seen in several public collections, including that of the Rijksmuseum. He has worked on a number of long-term projects, such as The Eyes of War, which focuses on people who were blinded in World War ii, and Metropolis, which depicts life in megacities. He has published several books, the best known of which are perhaps Trabant: The Final Days of Production (2007) and The Never-Ending War (2005). Roemers has won several Silver Camera Awards. And in 2006 he received a second prize in the World Press Photo Awards in the category of Portrait Stories. He is affiliated to the photo agencies Panos Pictures, Hollandse Hoogte and laif.

Relics of the Cold War (2009) is another of Roemers’ long-term projects. On both sides of former Iron Curtain, he spent many years taking photos of landscapes in which traces of the Cold War can still be seen. He explores the relationship between these landscapes and the remnants of that era. We see military bunkers and tunnel systems that echo people’s fears of impending war. The buildings in the West look the same as those in the East: they are the same defences, built in the same blind panic, to allay the same anxieties. This photo series shows a society ready to fight a war, which, in the worst case scenario, could well spell the end of that society. At the same time, the photos show the will to de-escalate, because much of this military machine has since been decommissioned.