Seven decades of Keld Helmer-Petersen's quietly pioneering abstract
color photography
Denmark's best-known photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen (1920-2013)
published his first photobook, 122 Colour Photographs, in 1948. His
work was immediately notable for its inventive composition, which turned
landscapes and buildings into abstract patterns, and for the
photographer's embrace of color at a time when only black-and-white
photography was considered serious. When Life magazine reproduced
several pages from the book in 1949, Helmer-Petersen's vision found a
wide, international audience for the first time.
Helmer-Petersen's style was experimental modernism tempered by a lyrical
simplicity and a sense of keen, quiet observation. By isolating details
and compressing visual space, the photographer turned the real world
into vibrant, graphic pattern. "The pictures aim at illustrating nothing
whatever beyond the fact that we are surrounded by many beautiful and
exciting things," Helmer-Petersen said. "And that there can be a great
deal of pleasure in spotting them and capturing their beauty by means of
color photography."
Keld Helmer-Petersen: Photographs 1941-2013 offers a full
retrospective of the photographer's masterful work over the course of
seven decades. Each chapter is introduced with a short text by
Helmer-Petersen himself, and the publication concludes with an interview
with the photographer conducted by Martin Parr.
