Aspekt: Unermüdlich
Zitat: "Siebenmal hinfallen, achtmal aufstehen." -jap. Sprichwort
Beschreibung: Zeit seines Lebens musste Joris seine Vorstellungen und Ideale immer wieder mit der Realität konfrontiert sehen. Nicht jedes Mal überstanden diese den Konflikt und mussten angepasst oder ersetzt werden, doch Joris selbst ließ sich davon nie entmutigen. Bisher ist es ihm noch immer gelungen genug Mut zum Weitermachen zu mobilisieren.

Aspekt:Der Blick des Fotographen
Zitat: "Betrachten ist ein schöpferischer Akt." -Oliviero Toscani
Beschreibung: Joris ist ein erfahrener Fotograph, der jedoch kaum in einem Studio arbeitet. Deshalb hat er sich mit der Zeit einen besonderen Blick für die Dinge angeeignet. Da er seine Bilder nicht so arrangieren kann, wie er es möchte, muss er ein Gespür für den richtigen Augenblick entwickeln, dass durch eine außerordentliche Beobachtungsgabe gespeist wird. Dementsprechend entgeht Joris' geübten Augen nur selten etwas.

Aspekt: Wahrheitsliebend
Zitat: "Die Aufrichtigkeit ist die erste Bedingung jeglichen geistigen Schaffens." -Sully Prudhomme
Beschreibung: Joris ist stets bemüht aufrichtig und ehrlich zu sein. Sich selbst aber auch seinen Mitmenschen gegenüber. Natürlich gibt es Situationen in denen es besser ist, die Wahrheit zu verschweigen oder nur zum Teil wiederzugeben, doch tut sich Joris in solchen Momenten immer etwas schwer damit. Im Umkehrschluss sind Lügen wohl auch die einzige Möglichkeit eine Freundschaft zu dem Niederländer nachhaltig zu gefährden.

 Aspekt: Menschenkenner
Zitat: " Den Menschen kann man nicht anders als unter Menschen und im Umgange mit ihnen kennen lernen." -Christian Garve
Beschreibung: Schon immer war Joris jemand, der gut mit anderen auskam. Er hatte ein intuitives Gespür dafür welche Gesten, welche Worte nötig waren oder gewählt werden mussten. Doch erst durch seinen Beruf, der ihn in die verschiedensten Winkel der Welt und zu den unterschiedlichsten Menschen geführt hat, wurde seine charismatische Eigenschaft ernsthaft gefordert und weiter ausgebildet. Seitdem ist Joris Gespür für seine Mitmenschen sehr zuverlässig und er besitzt eine große Fertigkeit im Umgang mit anderen Menschen.

Fachgebiete: Fotographie, graphisches Design, Journalismus

On the first glance Joris van Campen looks like a pretty normal middle-European - fair hair, white skin, normal height and weight - maybe somewhat gaunt albeit youthful looking. His face is quite flawless and his smile has an inherent warmth and an unobtrusive charm.
His look is attentive and keen while his eyes seem to tell of someone who has been witness to more events and places many people even could imagine. A quite remarkable feature of the photographer is also the bunch of scars which are distributed all over his body. Some are due to bullet wounds others originate from a shell splinter or other objects that can be found flying through the air of conflict areas or warzones. So one could say that if Joris' eyes tell of the experiences he made whilst his work as a war photographer then his body verifies these experiences.

Joris is a kind and friendly person who can be really quiet although he has many stories to tell. He never tries to force his experiences or opinions on others if not asked. He encounters erveryone he meets with percibtable respect and sticks to this even in disputes.
His greatest fear is that he could abuse the people he takes pictures of and to him this is a constant concern. As a consequence he preceds very cations when photographing others.
Joris life has showed him, that - even if there might potentially be a god- there is no place for gods in this world and so Joris thinks of himself as an Atheist albeit he thinks that this a question that one has to answer for himself.
Due to his dangerous job he has accepted that death is possible an inevitable, which makes him often seem fatalistic in the eyes of strangers.
Joris has quite a knack in influencing others but makes seldom use of it. In fact he is quite an honourable and honest person who tries to live up to his own standards.

For most of the Dutch people in 1978 the 25th of June was quite a miserable day but for Morten and Anja van Campen it was blessed with the birth of their first son Joris.
He was quite a smart child the young Joris though he was seldom willed to show enough effort in  school the only thing he really was good at were languages and arts. So his parents were quite content when young Joris managed to muddle through his VMBO.

The young boy had other interests. At the age of twelve he saw the famous picture Guerrillo Heroice for the first time. Not yet knowing who the person that was shown on the picture was, Joris was deeply stirred be the unexpected sight. It was the first time he really understood how much emotion and axpression could be transported by a photo, which was taken within a second and didn't show anything more than the plain truth about that moment.

But of course like many others Jori was caught by the charm of the charismatic person from the picture so he was eager to find out who that man was. So there where three things that were important to Joris: playing football in the youth team of Sparta Rotterdam, earning money with small jobs to afford an own camera and learning about Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution. The latter made him sympathise with left-wing ideology and brought the idea of becoming active in politics up. That was at the age of fifteen in his last year at school. In the meantime he had finally bought his first camera but due to the lack of argentine revolutionaries that could be taken pictures of Joris saw himself limited to things in his environment. Often he undertook trips to the countryside of Rotterdam taking pictures of animals, plants and natural phenomena. With every trip the appreciation of nature grew more and more within hin and finally culminated in joining DWARS, a youth-wing of the dutch GreenLeft party.

There he made contacts to activist of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and became a member at once. In 1994 he participated in an operation against norwegian comercial whaling as photographer. At this point Joris knew what he wanted to do with his life - he wanted to show the people what was really going on in the world by means of photography.

Joris made some more trips with sea shepheard crews an earned money in the meantime with freelancer jobs for european newspapers. His first big engagement was during the Kosovo War where he and an other journalist followed a group of KLA-rebels for some weeks. Joris' photos were quite in high demand when they retourned and in the public he made himself a name as a war photographer. Joris wasn't interested in the fame and in fact he was so hard struck by the things he had seen there that he backed out and avoided the public life for a while. When he managed to cope with his experiences from Kosovo War he decided to stick to his plan and wanted to keep on taking pictures that would tell more than mass media could ever obscoure. He was still young and idealistic and totally wrong. When he was sent to the War in Afghanistan he had to recognise, that as a part of mass media he could only produce what they wanted him to.
When he heard about the concept of embedded journalism he draw new hope. No one could hold him back photographing when he was in the field with the soldiers. But they could. He participated as an embeeded journalist within a british infantry unit at the Iraq War but many of his pictures were seized and he was seldom allowed to talk with locals, though he managed to learn the arabic language quite well during his time there just as he learned Serbian in the Kosovo an he would learn Pashto when he would be retourning to Afghanistan.

After his experiences he was definitely done with going to conflict areas as an official press representative. He wasn't allowed to do what he wanted to and wearing a uniform was quite dangerous in a warzone. That he had learned the hard way when he was shot at in small town near Basra, but Joris wasn't the one to give up because of danger or injuries. Instead he went a step forward and began organizing trips in areas of conflict at his own risk. With him went Garry Jones a british journalist and author who Joris got to know in Afghanistan. Garry had became quite a good friend to Joris over the years and they shared many common ideals.

Their first trip was to Kosovo in 2005 due to Joris' good connections he had made there. They wanted to show what the war had done to the region with the pupose to contribute to creating a consciousness for the aftermath of wars. The trip took them nearly three months and in the end they produced an illustrated book with Joris pictures and narrations of their experiences. The book was to become an unexpected success though it naturally couldn't be compared to mass market publications.
Other trips followed the first one - first Afghanistan then Kongo and Rwanda. The two journalist also focussed on poverty and the harsh living conditions. During these journeys Joris and Garry met many people and they always tried to not only get their stories and pictures like some journalists would do, they wanted to get to know the persons they interviewed and photographed.

Joris noticed that the more he got involved with showing the problems in the world to the western public the more he lost his belief in civilisation which was quite sad for him. So as a self-therapy he additionnaly tried to depict the achievements of mankind. The other reason of doing this was that Joris thought that the view of great inventions and technology might be inspiring enough to convert the paralysing effect of consternation due to the sight of his other pictures into motivation that might get people to do something about it.

Thanks to his connections and his charming personality Joris could run through and documentate the ESA astronaut training or visit CERN where he documented the first experiments with the LHC.
Today Joris is quite a celebrety when it comes to photography art. He draw back from politics when the green movement became more and more a shallow construct to help lobbyists doing their job, but he still supports Sea Shepherd and though he quitted playing football he nevertheless is big fan of Sparta Rotterdam.

character development in progress...

Joris van Campen

Klasse und Stufe: Charismatic Hero 3 / Dedicated Hero 3
 Exp: 16 100
Allegiances: Media ethics, Skepticism, Good
Nationality: Dutch
Hair colour: blond
Eye colour: blue
Age: 32; * 25.06.1978
Height: 1,76 m
Weight: 68 kg
Init: +6  Senses: Listen: 8; Search: 3;  Spot: 15

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