If you cannot Forgive, you can Kill

Gulf war. The Rwanda Genocide. The Siege of Sarajevo. The war in Chechnya, Dafur, Somalia, Iraq, Syria. And finally: The current war in Ukraine. For more than a quarter of a century, the Danish war photographer Jan Garup has used his photographs to draw our attention to  the conflict regions of our world and document the humanitarian crisis.

His work focuses on the people who suffer directly from humanitarian disasters and are affected by hunger, war and displacement. Honestly, intensely, and with great empathy, he tells the stories of those who are powerless and have no voice themselves, while at the same time reflecting on his belief in photojournalism as a tool to document memories and bring in testimonies to effect change.

Jan Grarup has won the World Press Photo Award eight times for his work, first in 2001 for his coverage of the war in Kosovo. Grarup is one of the co-founders of the photo agency Noor and has published several books, most recently “And Then There Was Silence,” a five-kilo collection of his photographs since the 1990s.

The lecture was followed by a Q&A moderated by Nadin Heinich, in which Jan Grarup answered the guests’ questions and gave a personal insight into the work of a war photographer.