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The Eyes of War, an Exhibition by Martin Roemers

September 30th, 2014
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News from Berlin - From the 1st of October to January the 4th, the Berlin “Deutsches Historisches Museum” will be hosting an exhibition by Dutch photographer Martin Roemers portraying forty faces of war.

The inspiration for the project came to him in 2004 when, during a D-day celebration in Normandy, the author got to know Frederick Bentley, a blind British war veteran who lost his sight due to a German hand grenade. This inspired Roemers to develop a project portraying series of veterans from other countries, all of which have lost their sight during war.

The exhibition takes place in a context of several war remembrance ceremonies, which started this summer with the Hundredth Anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, and is continuing next year with the Seventieth Anniversary of the End of the Second World War. In this context, the “Deutsches Historisches Museum” decided to host an exhibition that fits in and touches its public, without depreciating into happy endings: blindness changes deeply these faces of war, and spectators cannot escape this dry and cruel reality. Martin Roemers’ Eyes of War portray stories that the collective memory would rather leave unseen. 

The photographer has shown a special dedication to war representations over time; some of his most significant projects are “Relicts of the Cold War”, capturing traces of this historical period through countries of former enemies, and “Kabul Portraits”, presenting portraits of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in Afghanistan. The project “The Eyes of War” also has particular meaning within the sixth European Month of Photography Berlin themed “Upheavals and Utopias. The Other Europe”, a month dedicated to the examination of the continuous changes in Europe through the Twentieth century and the way they are experienced, how new perspectives have emerged, and how our lives are being enriched by exchanges with other cultures.  

Martin Roemers himself will be attending the exhibition opening on October the 1st at the “Deutsches Historisches Museum”. A special guidance system for the visually impaired will also be made available to visitors.

News from Berlin - Berlin Global