Jeroen Robert Kramer (1967, The Netherlands) is a former New York Times and Vanity Fair photographer. After he moved to France to study French literature and to do a minor in Art, in 2000 he started working in the Middle East as a documentary photographer (for e.g. Getty Images). At first based in Syria, he has since moved to Lebanon.

Kramer’s documentary work has appeared in international newspapers and magazines covering subjects in the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan, Burma and the Philippines. Besides an unblinking study of life and death in the harsh-torn region of the Middle East, his work started to reflect his inner struggle with human failure, aesthetic limitations and brutal insights that came with his profession.

In his series ‘Beyrouth objets trouvés’ poetry prevails. Seemingly insignificant objects or scenes, “intimate carriers of meaning”, they whisper to us stories we barely understand, but which we, in one-way or another know that they are there. With turning this wonderful page and presenting to us the stories of every day life, Kramer keeps us reading and paradoxically tells an even greater truth. That of human existence and love. The pictures may show jumbled scenes or broken objects, such as a ripped poster hanging from a hoarding, but the style is one of simplicity, calmness and clean, subtle signaling.