Jules Camps was born in Venray on 20 November 1924 and died in Sentani in West Papua on 2 March1995. He was a Roman Catholic missionary. He joined the Franciscan friars’ minor order as a novice in 1944 and was ordained as a priest in 1951. In 1952 he left as a missionary to Dutch New Guinea where he worked from 1953 to 1960 in Kokonau in the Mimika area. In 1963 he was placed in the Baliem valley, first in Wamena, then in Pugima and from 1969 to 1974 in Jiwika. In 1974 he was transferred to the nearby Ilaga Valley and in 1977 to the Wissel Lakes due to health problems. After a period of leave in the Netherlands and Argentina, he returned to West Papua in 1994 and worked in the Sentani area where he passed away in 1995.
During his stay in Jiwika he started making 8mm films of important events, rituals, habits and customs. He made a total of 43 films that are also preserved by the PACE foundation. In Jiwika, the anthropologist Karl Heider from the United States stayed with him for several months. Jules Camps later wrote two reviews of Heider’s books on the Baliem, The Dugum Dani and The Gardens of War, the latter together with United States anthropologist Larry Naylor. Both were published in the journal Irian of the Institute for Anthropology, University of Tjenderawasih in Jayapura. (1-2 and 1-3 pdf).