Keld Helmer-Petersen: Photographs 1941–2013

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The great Danish photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen was one of the earliest photographers anywhere to have his colour images accepted as art photography. His work was immediately notable for its inventive composition, which turned landscapes and buildings into abstract patterns. With 350 images, Keld Helmer-Petersen 1941-2013 is as comprehensive a retrospective as you could hope to find.

Publisher's description

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.”