KHP at work in the studio, 1960s. Photo: Ingemann Sørensen
A life in photography
Keld Helmer-Petersen is one of the most influential Danish photographers in the 20th Century. He was an international pioneer in colour photography and was a central figure in not only Danish but also European modernist photography. His career spanned 70 years and he had strong interest in modern architecture, industrial areas and structures. He was very prolific and continuously experimented and challenged the many possibilities of the photographic image.
His efforts have put a mark on photography as an artistic expression. With his keen eye for things that are generally overlooked, Keld Helmer-Petersen opened a door to the hidden beauty of a world, we thought we knew so well.
This website will introduce you to the life and work of Keld Helmer-Petersen.
News
The Photographic World of Keld Helmer-Petersen
Art historian Inger Ellekilde Bonde has written the first full introduction to the photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen, who in Denmark turned photography into an artform.
The architect and friend Jørn Utzon has said of Keld Helmer-Petersen that after looking at his photographs, one would look with different eyes on our surroundings. Through his art, he let unprecedented connections between things appear in the immediate surroundings: a drainpipe, a fire escape, a crack in the asphalt, a reed stalk.
People rarely appear visibly in his photographs. But removing man from the image is not the same as removing the human aspect of it. The images bring forth imaginations and associations, and the author of the new book about Helmer-Petersen, Inger Ellekilde Bonde, has gone to the photographer's work as an 'exercise atlas in seeing'.
Published by U Press (www.upress.dk), Copenhagen (In Danish only).
100 years and still young
Photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen would have been 100 years on August 23, 2020.
LFI (Leica Fotografie International) celebrates the date with an impressive notice on their blog:
Photo: KHP with his first Leica camera in 1940, age 20
Keld Helmer-Petersen at the Art Museum Brandts
Educator Mathias Rude gives a vivid review of a current exhibition of Keld Helmer-Petersen’s works at the Art Museum Brandts in Odense. The museum has the largest collection of original works of Keld Helmer-Petersen in Denmark. Production: Art Museum Brandts, 2020.