about

Jan Grarup (Danish, b.1968) has over the course of his eighteen-year career photographed many of recent history’s defining human rights and conflict issues.  Grarup’s work reflects his belief in photojournalism’s role as an instrument of witness and memory to incite change, and the necessity of telling the stories of people who are rendered powerless to tell their own.

His images of the Rwandan and Darfur genocides provide incontrovertible evidence of unthinkable human brutality, in the hope that such events will never happen, or be allowed to happen again. His work, The Boys from Ramallah and The Boys from Hebron, covers both sides of the recent Intifada expressed through the lives of children coming of age amidst the violence.  Grarup’s work takes the viewer to the limits of human despair, dignity, suffering and hope. His images are relevant to us all, because they form a chronicle of the time in which we live, but at times do not dare to recognize.

Grarup has been honored with some of the most prestigious awards from the photography industry and human rights organizations, including: World Press Photo, UNICEF, W. Eugene Smith Foundation for Humanistic Photography, POYi and NPPA. In 2005 he was awarded with a Visa d’Or at the Visa Pour l’Image photo festival in France, for his coverage of Darfur’s refugee crisis. Grarup’s work has been widely exhibited, and he has been a contributor to many books.

In 2006, Grarup released Shadowland (Politikens Forlag), a testament of the people who have in times of strife allowed him into their lives.  Featuring a forward text by HH the Dalai Lama, Shadowland contains 11 essays on Iran, Darfur, Chechnya, Kashmir, Iraq, Rammallah, Rwanda and other stories. It won PDN’s Annual Photography prize for best photography books.

Grarup's work regularly appears in major magazines such as Newsweek, The Guardian, Sunday Times Magazine (UK), Stern, GEO, Paris Match, L’Express, la Repubblica and other magazines worldwide. He lives outside Copenhagen with his wife and their three children. Jan Grarup works as a freelancer on both commercial as journalistic projects. He is based in Copenhagen.

books

Jan Grarup published his first book Shadowland in 2006. The book won PDN’s Photography Annual 2007 for best photography books (Foto 8 review)