Biography

Keld Helmer-Petersen is one of the most influential Danish photographers in the 20thCentury. 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.

The Early Years

Keld Helmer-Petersen was born 23rd August 1920 in Copenhagen, where he lived and worked most of his life until his death in 2013. He started photographing in 1938, when he was given a camera as a high school graduation gift. In just a few years he began working in a visual figurative language.

He studied the graphic and abstract effects of a photograph in particular. He was self-taught and studied technical manuals, journals and photobooks, like ‘Die Welt ist Schö’n from 1928 by the German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch.

He also found inspiration in the radical image experiments during the interwar period, the avant-garde photography during the Bauhaus period and the American Straight Photography. Throughout his life he maintained a strong interest in international trends, not just photography - but also art, literature, film, music and architecture. However, he wasn’t only inspired by them, but also collaborated and socialised with architects, artists, writers and musicians as a natural part of his work as a photographer.  

From amateur photography club to avant-garde scene

In the early years he joined several Danish amateur photography clubs and increasingly created a visual language in opposition to the romantic and traditional visual vision that dominated in those clubs. He insisted on the photograph being a modern artistic expression in line with painting and graphics. He did not distinguish between photography, graphics or painting, and believed that while the medium and process varies, the final result is the same. This was reflected in his photographs from the mid 1940s until the end of the decade when he found and connected with a circle of like-minded concrete artists, including the Danish group ‘Linien II’, with whom he also exhibited.

The legacy of Bauhaus

From 1950 to 1951, Helmer-Petersen studied at the Institute of Design art school in Chicago. The stay there had a major impact on the development of his development as an artist. The Institute of Design was founded by Hungarian artist and Bauhaus teacher lászló Moholy-Nagy in 1937, based on a desire to pursue the ideas of the Bauhaus school in Germany, which was closed down due to pressure from the Nazis in 1933. Helmer-Petersen's stay at the legendary Institute of Design came about because of his first photobook ‘122 Colour Photographs’ published in 1948. It gained international attention and was recognised as one of the pioneering examples of art photography in colour. The featured photographs exploredcolour as shapes and surfaces in an original way, and it is what Helmer-Petersen is best known for today. 

 Industry and metropolis 

At the Institute of Design, Helmer-Petersen followed several of the school's basic courses and taught photography in collaboration with the American photographer Harry Callahan. The aesthetic discoveries he made while there and the stay in the modern, industrialised metropolitan city of Chicago influenced his work for the rest of his life. Chicago's impact on his artistic development was clearly showcased in the book ‘Fragments of a city’ published in 1960 where the photographs were taken in the city of Chicago.

Up until the 1990s he was busy photographing urban environments and industrial areas in the outskirts. He was particularly interested in the area around the harbourside in his hometown of Copenhagen. The result was never a conventional documentation or topographical photograph. It was the photographic potential of things, architecture and nature, that interested him.

 Camera-less experiments

Helmer-Petersen was predominantly preoccupied with what the photograph could be as an artistic expression. He experimented intensely with various photographic techniques, such as camera-less images or photograms which were created in the darkroom. He created pure abstract image creations ongoingly from 1949, but especially in the 1970s and 1980s. 

He continued experimenting during the 2000s and became interested in creating digital images. Instead of images created in a darkroom, he started scanning found objects on a flatbed scanner and edited them digitally. The works can be seen in the books ‘Black Noise’(2010) and ‘Back to Black’ (2011).  

 Teacher and architectural photographer

After his time at the Institute of Design, teaching art was of great importance to Helmer-Petersen and in 1964 he was appointed the first lecturer of photography at the Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen. Until retiring in 1990, he had influenced many architectural students' perception of architecture and photography.

From the outset, architecture played a significant role in Helmer-Petersen’s work, and throughout his longstanding career he was able to combine his personal interest with his work as a professional photographer. In 1956 Helmer-Petersen established himself as a professional architecture photographer with his own studio in Copenhagen. For many years he worked with some of the most renowned Danish modern architects and designers, such as Jørn Utzon, Kay Kørbing, Poul Kjærholm, Finn Juhl, Mogens Koch and Nanna Ditzel. He did works for ferries and schools in the 1950s and 1960s and his last commission was a series of works in 2008 called ‘Structures’ which can be seen at the Copenhagen Airport train station.

These works have introduced art photography to a wider audience.