In 2011 Roemers’s photo series Metropolis was honored with the famous World Press Photo Award. The jury voted his long-term project on mega-cities with populations of more than ten million the best submission in the category Daily Life Stories.The world becomes a city: according to estimates from the United Nations, in three-and-a-half decades, around two-thirds of the world’s inhabitants will live in cities; in 2030, it is estimated that there will be forty-one mega-cities. The Dutch photographer focuses on this trend toward increasing urbanization. “My question is: how can people live in cities that are so overwhelming, so populous?” In the long exposures, traffic and crowds of blend to become diffuse, swirling streams. At home in these urbanized giants, with all of their dynamics, residents of these extreme worlds seem to be singled out, like islands. We are very pleased to be able to offer a colorful photograph of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, as an Edition Hatje Cantz by the Dutch photographer. In an interview, Roemers explained: “For all their chaos, big cities still have a sense of humanity. That’s what I want to reveal with these photographs”.
