Photography in Denmark
Encyclopedia
Photography in Denmark has developed from strong participation and interest in the very beginnings of the art
in 1839 to the success of a considerable number of Danes
in the world of photography
today. Pioneers such as Mads Alstrup
and Georg Emil Hansen
paved the way for a rapidly growing profession during the last half of the 19th century while both artistic and press photographers have made internationally recognized contributions. Although Denmark
was slow to accept photography as an art form, Danish photographers are now increasingly active, participating in key exhibitions around the world.
Among Denmark's most successful contemporary photographers are Jacob Aue Sobol
who gained recognition for captivating portraits of his Greenlandic girlfirend and Per Bak Jensen
who introduced a new perspective to modern landscape photography. Press photography has prospered too under award-winning contributors such as Jan Grarup
and Claus Bjørn Larsen
who have covered wars and conflicts of global importance over the past 20 years.
in January 1839 on behalf of Crown Prince Frederik
when Louis Daguerre
revealed the art of daguerreotyping
. Falbe informed the Crown Prince of a visit to Daguerre where he had seen some of the very earliest daguerreotypes, explaining how impressed he had been by the new process and how important he thought it would be for art and science in Denmark. Shortly afterwards, he returned to Copenhagen
with a camera and a couple of his own daguerreotypes for the Crown Prince who, believing them to be of scientific importance, deposited them with Hans Christian Ørsted
, one of Denmark's most prominent scientists. As a result of Ørsted's own interest in photography, the new art took on rapidly: the daguerreotypist Mads Alstrup
(1809–76) opened Copenhagen's first photographic studio
in 1842; and by 1850 there were over a hundred studios in Copenhagen and many more in the provinces.
The oldest photograph on record in Denmark is credited to Peter Faber
(1810–1877), a song-writer and a pioneer in telegraphy
. His daguerreotype of Ulfeldts Plads
is in the Copenhagen City Museum. The image of the square is in fact reversed left to right, as was normal for daguerreotypes unless a mirror was used together with the camera. Careful analysis of the photograph suggests that it dates back to July 1840. The exposure time of about 15 minutes in sunlight explains why the only figure to be seen is a man sleeping at the foot of the Pillar of Shame towards the left of the picture.
Its status in the history of Danish photography is rivalled by a portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen
sitting at an easel outside his studio in the garden of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at Charlottenborg Palace
in Copenhagen. This daguerrotype was taken by the French photographer Aymard Charles Théodore Neubourg, who visited Copenhagen in the summer of 1840. An examination of the circumstances under which it was taken reveals that the date was Sunday, 26 July 1840. It has also been noticed that Thorvaldsen is making the horn sign with what apparently is his left hand although, as a result of the daguerrotype mirror effect, it is actually his right hand. This has been ascribed to the anxiety he must have experienced while facing the new mechanical device which could reveal even the slightest detail.
Several Danes are remembered for their contributions to daguerreotypy. While in Paris in 1848, Anton Melbye
(1818–1875), a marine artist, learnt from Daguerre. Rudolph Striegler
, Johan Emilius Bogh and Johan Ludvig Ussing were among those who began to specialize in portrait photography
opening studios in Copenhagen and the provinces.
Georg Emil Hansen
(1833–1891) from Næstved came from a family of photographers. When his father, Carl Christian Hansen, opened a studio in Copenhagen, he decided to open one of his own. He became one of the most respected photographers of his day, with Christian IX of Denmark
and the Danish Royal Family
as customers in the early 1860s. He also excelled in adopting new techniques. He was the first to use paper prints and to make full-length portrait enlargements. He received awards for his exhibitions in London
(1862) and Berlin
(1865). In 1867, together with his brother, Niels Christian Hansen, and two other photographers, he set up a photographic firm which later became Hansen, Schou & Weller, suppliers to the royal Danish court.
was brought to Denmark by Rudolph Striegler
in 1860. It spread rapidly and by the 1870s provided a cheap and attractive alternative to portrait painting for photographers such as Ludvig Grundtvig
(1836–1901) and Adolph Lønborg (1835–1916) in Copenhagen, and Heinrich Tønnies
(1856–1903) who opened a studio in Aalborg
.
Heinrich Tønnies
(1825–1903) remains to date one of the premier CDV photographers of Denmark. In June of 1856 he began his photographic career as a partner under C. Fritsche in Aalborg and by December of the same year he bought his partner's share of the business and struck out with a studio under his own name. By 1861, Tönnies' business boomed requiring a larger studio and the hiring of assistants, and by 1870 he became a Danish citizen. Ultimately, his family business spanned three-generations and 75 years. The breadth of his photographic products included: Daguerreotypes, calotypes, pannotypes, photo-lithography, stereoscopy, ambrotypes, CDVs, and medallions. It is believed that he produced no less than 75,000 CDVs, many ordered in relation to a large wave of emigration from Nordjylland to North America. Owing to the poverty of Denmark's Vendsyssel region, local demands for inexpensive CDVs persisted in Aalborg right up until World War I, making Tönnies' studio one of the last to produce CDVs in Denmark.
Pietro Boyesen
(1819–1882) was a Danish
photographer who spent most of his professional life in Rome
. Boyesen had a talent for composition and characterization. In contrast to the boring studio portraits which were so common at the time, Boyesen would have his subjects pose outdoors in intimate Roman settings. By playing with the subjects clothes and their relationship to the surroundings, Boyesen would produce works presenting a somewhat timid but intimate charm.
Frederikke Federspiel
(1839–1913) was one of the very first female photographers in Denmark. At the age of 35, she received training in photography from her family in Hamburg
, Germany, where her uncle, Poul Friedrich Lewitz, her aunt and cousins were all photographers. In 1876, when registering her business in Aalborg
, she became one of the first officially recognized female photographers in Denmark when she gave her profession as "Photographin", a German word which clearly shows that she was a woman. Specializing in portraits, she also became one of the earliest female members of the Dansk Fotografisk Forening
in 1883. One of the first to experiment with magnesium power
for flash, she installed electric lamps in her studio when electricity came to Aalborg in 1901.
Kristen Feilberg
(1839-1919) stands as another Danish photographer known mainly for his images captured far beyond the borders of Denmark. From the 1860s until the 1890s, Feilberg participated in expeditions to Sumatra
, Singapore
, and Penang
. In 1867, he exhibited photos at an exhibition in Paris and in 1870 he joined an expedition to the Batak lands of East Sumatra, where he successfully recorded scores of ethnographic images.
Christian Hedemann
(1852–1932) counts as among the earliest Danish photographers who emigrated the farthest distance. Though educated in Denmark, he left Copenhagen in 1878 and settled in Hawaii
. Primarily occupied as a mechanical engineer at the Hana Sugar Plantation, Island of Maui
, and later as a technical manager at the Honolulu Iron Works, as an avid amateur photographer he helped found the Hawaiian Camera Club (1889-1893). He became an American citizen in 1903 and in 1909 accepted an appointment as Danish Consul. His remarkable photographs of the Hawaiian royal family and native social elites remain as some of the earliest images available of pre-annexed Hawaii.
Mary Steen
(1856–1939) was a successful photographer in Copenhagen, pioneering indoor photography with pictures of families inside their own homes. Later, as court photographer, she not only photographed the royal family in Denmark but also spent some time in London where she photographed Queen Victoria. She did much to improve working conditions for women and her example encouraged many women to become professional photographers.
Benedicte Wrensted
(1859 –1949) was a notable Danish female photographer, who emigrated to the USA in 1894. Wrensted learned her craft from her maternal aunt, Charlotte Borgen, and for a time in the 1880s operated a studio on Torvet 8, in Horsens
, Denmark. Much of her photographic career is anchored to her studio in Pocatello
, a small town in southeastern Idaho
, where she took photographs of the local inhabitants and recorded the growth of the town. Perhaps her most famous work remains her documentary photographs of the Shoshone
Great Basin Native Americans which are considered of great anthropological importance. Wrensted became a U.S. citizen in 1912, at age 53, and in the same year ended her career as a photographer. Many of her Native American images are preserved at the Smithsonian Institution
and National Archives
.
Ludvig Luplau operated in Copenhagen until he emigrated to the U.S.A (circa 1870), where he opened a photography studio in Chicago. His CDV backmarks stated "Ludvig Luplau from Copenhagen," and the Chicago city business directories listed him at a variety of locations in the 1870s-90s. His stereoview backmark advertising claimed Lupalu & Co., of 80 Fourth Street, specialized in both outdoor photography and stereoscopic interiors. Louis Laplau, his son, continued in photography beginning in the 1890s.
Peter Elfelt
(1866–1931), who served his photography apprenticeship in 1893 in Hillerød
with Carl Rathsack, soon opened a studio of his own together with his two brothers. His work was widely recognized with the result that, in 1900, he was given the title of Photographer to the Royal Danish Court. He took not only a large number of portraits but also landscapes across Denmark. He later became a major name in cinematography
too.
, using collodium to produce a positive image on glass, and the pannotype, also collodium-based, were both used in Denmark from around 1855. Negative-based
paper prints, used from the beginning of the 1850s, were produced on salt paper
until around 1857 when salt was replaced by albumen
. Collodion emulsion chloride paper was used from 1865 and in 1880 gelatin emulsion paper
was introduced.
and Julius Møller were among the many who were influenced by the pictorialist
trend, concentrating on pictorial landscape and genre photography.
From the 1890s, the Detroit Publishing Company used the Photochrom
technique based on chromolithography
to produce a large number of colour postcards, many of European cityscapes. In their collection, there are several views of Copenhagen taken between 1890 and 1900.
Benefitting from the advent of postcards, Mary Willumsen
(1884–1961) photographed women in scanty clothing or nude at the Helgoland beach facility in Copenhagen. Between 1916 and 1920, she took many such photographs which she sold at a nearby kiosk. The operation was discontinued when the police began to take an interest. Many of the compositions are now considered to have considerable artistic merit.
The Danish Union of Press Photographers
(Pressefotografforbundet) is claimed to be the world's first national organization for newspaper photographers. It was founded in 1912 in Copenhagen
by six press photographers. Today it has over 800 members.
One of the earliest and most successful press photographers was Danish-American Jacob Riis
(1849–1914) who campaigned for social reform in the United States
. Essentially a journalist, he took up photography only after he had emigrated to America. A prominent user of flash
, he was able to publish indoor scenes of the slums of New York City
, contributing to the implementation of "model tenements". He is now regarded as a pioneer in photography.
While some Danish newspapers started to include photographs in the 1890s, it was only in the 1950s that press photography was introduced throughout the country. Taking the French-based international photographic bureau Magnum
as a model, Jesper Høm
, Gregers Nielsen and others set up Delta Photos, a group designed to support journalistic photography.
Delta Photos was dissolved in 1972 but other organizations such as Morten Bo
's Ragnarok and Henrik Saxgren's 2. Maj sought to promote more clearly defined social and political objectives. Some photographers, such as Viggo Rivad
and Krass Clement
, chose instead to become freelancers.
In the 1970s, Jacob Holdt
(b. 1947) spent a number of years in the United States
where he photographed scenes of the socially disadvantaged across the country. In his book American Pictures (1977), a worldwide success, he contrasted these with photographs of the American elite, hoping to provide a basis for social reform.
Today Danish press photographers are as active as ever. Jan Grarup
, in particular, has covered wars and conflicts around the globe over the past 20 years, earning prestigious awards at home and abroad. Claus Bjørn Larsen
, also working as a war photographer
, won the World Press Photo of the Year
award in 1999 for his work in Kosovo
.
Documentary photography has also flourished outside the press. As an example, Jette Bang
(1914–1964) was fascinated by Greenland
and the Greenlanders. From 1936, she took over 12,000 black-and-white photographs of the country and its inhabitants, showing how close to nature people lived.
Since the very beginning, Danes have argued about the precise place of photography in society. In 1839, Crown Prince Frederik deposited Falbe's daguerreotypes with Ørsted, the secretary of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
, despite the fact that Daguerre, the inventor, was an artist. In 1842, the artist Johan Frederik Møller was refused a grant from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts for studying photography in France on the grounds that it was not an art. Photographers came within neither the scope of the Academy of Sciences nor that of the Academy of Fine Arts but were regarded as manual workers.
The confusion continued until the end of the 19th century when artists began to use photography as an aid to painting. Notable examples are Peder Severin Krøyer
, Jens Ferdinand Willumsen
and Laurits Andersen Ring who used photography to obtain more detail and realism in their paintings.
With the advent of photographic societies such as Danske Kamera Piktorialister (Danish Camera Pictorialists) in the 1930s, there was increasing pressure from activists such as H. B. J. Cramer to have photography recognized as an art form. Indeed, the movement continued right up to the 1970s. A counter-movement to pictorialism
, the 1920s' Neue Sachlichkeit
was slow to reach Denmark but surfaced in 1948 when Keld Helmer-Petersen
published his abstract colour studies in 122 Colour Photographs.
Apart from the 20 rather amateurish artistic photography events arranged by Aage Remfeldt between 1946 and 1976 at Charlottenborg
, Denmark had few photographic exhibitions until the 1960s. The situation improved in 1963 when Jesper Høm
arranged an exhibition at the Danish Museum of Art & Design with photographers from New York
, Moscow
and Paris
. Another positive influence was Keld Helmer-Petersen
's book Fragments of a City with photographs of fire escapes and artisically silhouetted cranes taken while he was a student at Chicago's Institute of Design
, some of which were published in the magazine Perspectiv.
In the winter of 1968–1969, Jens Juncker-Jensen went even further with an excellent exhibition Fotografiet som udtryksmiddel (Photography as a means of expression) for which he drew the very best material from the few photographic books of the time, attracting not only professional and amateur photographers but also architects and television producers. It provided a basis for six TV programmes over the following months. There was, however, little real discussion of photography as an art form.
In the early 1970s, under the influence of the United States where photography had become an academic discipline, exhibitions such as New American Photography in Copenhagen's Bella Center
presented top artistic photographers of the 1950s and 1960s including Harry Callahan, Jerry Uelsmann
and Diane Arbus
. This was followed in 1973 by the opening of Galleriet for Creativ Fotografi (Gallery for Creative Photography) in Copenhagen, to be followed in 1977 by the IMAGE gallery in Aarhus
which encouraged experimental photography. Subsequent exhibitions involved the landscape photographer Kirsten Klein
, the pioneers of staged photography Nanna Bisp Büchert and Lis Steincke, as well as the magic realist Per Bak Jensen
.
In the 1990s, after Per Bak Hansen had joined the teaching staff at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, it was clear that photography had been accepted as an art form. As evidence, in October 2004, for the very first time, a number of the Academy's students and graduates presented their photographs at an exhibition in Copenhagen's Galleri Asbæk under the common title ”Eye of the Beholder – et blik på portrættet”.
, Stig Brøgger, Jytte Rex, Peter Brandes
and Ane Mette Ruge have actively contributed to its development. On the digital front, younger artists like Lisa Rosenmeier have combined classical techniques of art and photography with digitized forms of expression.
Some of Denmark's more widely recognized contemporary photographers are:
History of photography
The first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.- Etymology :The word photography derives from the Greek words phōs light, and gráphein, to write...
in 1839 to the success of a considerable number of Danes
Danes
Danish people or Danes are the nation and ethnic group that is native to Denmark, and who speak Danish.The first mention of Danes within the Danish territory is on the Jelling Rune Stone which mentions how Harald Bluetooth converted the Danes to Christianity in the 10th century...
in the world of photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
today. Pioneers such as Mads Alstrup
Mads Alstrup
Mads Alstrup was the first Danish portrait photographer with his own studio. For 16 years, he produced an enormous number of daguerreotypes, in Copenhagen and the provinces, before his business suffered from the financial crisis of 1857. He moved to Sweden in 1858 and continued to take portraits...
and Georg Emil Hansen
Georg Emil Hansen
Georg Emil Hansen was one of Denmark's pioneering photographers in the second half of the 19th century. He had his own studio in Copenhagen and later became a successful court photographer.-Early life:...
paved the way for a rapidly growing profession during the last half of the 19th century while both artistic and press photographers have made internationally recognized contributions. Although Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
was slow to accept photography as an art form, Danish photographers are now increasingly active, participating in key exhibitions around the world.
Among Denmark's most successful contemporary photographers are Jacob Aue Sobol
Jacob Aue Sobol
Jacob Aue Sobol is a Danish photographer. He has worked around the world, including in East Greenland, Guatemala, Tokyo, Bangkok and Copenhagen.Since 2007 Sobol has been a nominee at Magnum Photos...
who gained recognition for captivating portraits of his Greenlandic girlfirend and Per Bak Jensen
Per Bak Jensen
Per Bak Jensen , one of Denmark's leading artistic photographers, is a pioneer of modern landscape photography. His desolate images of nature or industrial sites often convey an almost metaphysical impression. His unusual subjects include corn stubble, twigs in the snow or a few isolated rocks...
who introduced a new perspective to modern landscape photography. Press photography has prospered too under award-winning contributors such as Jan Grarup
Jan Grarup
Jan Grarup is a Danish photojournalist who has worked both as a staff photographer and as a freelance, specializing in war and conflict photography. He has won many prizes including the World Press Photo award for his coverage of the war in Kosovo....
and Claus Bjørn Larsen
Claus Bjørn Larsen
Claus Bjørn Larsen is an award-winning Danish press photographer, now working as a freelance. He gained special recognition in 2000 when he won the World Press Photo of the Year competition for his work in Kosovo.-Early life:...
who have covered wars and conflicts of global importance over the past 20 years.
Daguerreotypes
Christian Tuxen Falbe, a Danish marine officer, was in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in January 1839 on behalf of Crown Prince Frederik
Christian VIII of Denmark
Christian VIII , was king of Denmark from 1839 to 1848 and, as Christian Frederick, king of Norway in 1814. He was the eldest son of Hereditary Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway and Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, born in 1786 at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen...
when Louis Daguerre
Louis Daguerre
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.- Biography :...
revealed the art of daguerreotyping
Daguerreotype
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....
. Falbe informed the Crown Prince of a visit to Daguerre where he had seen some of the very earliest daguerreotypes, explaining how impressed he had been by the new process and how important he thought it would be for art and science in Denmark. Shortly afterwards, he returned to Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
with a camera and a couple of his own daguerreotypes for the Crown Prince who, believing them to be of scientific importance, deposited them with Hans Christian Ørsted
Hans Christian Ørsted
Hans Christian Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism...
, one of Denmark's most prominent scientists. As a result of Ørsted's own interest in photography, the new art took on rapidly: the daguerreotypist Mads Alstrup
Mads Alstrup
Mads Alstrup was the first Danish portrait photographer with his own studio. For 16 years, he produced an enormous number of daguerreotypes, in Copenhagen and the provinces, before his business suffered from the financial crisis of 1857. He moved to Sweden in 1858 and continued to take portraits...
(1809–76) opened Copenhagen's first photographic studio
Photographic studio
A photographic studio is both a workspace and a corporate body. As a workspace it is much like an artist’s studio, but providing space to take, develop, print and duplicate photographs. Photographic training and the display of finished photographs may also be accommodated in a photographic studio...
in 1842; and by 1850 there were over a hundred studios in Copenhagen and many more in the provinces.
The oldest photograph on record in Denmark is credited to Peter Faber
Peter Faber (Danish telegraph specialist)
Peter Christian Frederik Faber was a Danish telegraphy pioneer. In Denmark, he is remembered first and foremost for his songwriting...
(1810–1877), a song-writer and a pioneer in telegraphy
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...
. His daguerreotype of Ulfeldts Plads
Gråbrødretorv
Gråbrødretorv is a public square in the centre of Copenhagen, Denmark, just off the pedestrian street Strøget.-History:Gråbrødretorv takes its name from a Franciscan friary, which was located at the site from 1238 to 1530 when it was demolished...
is in the Copenhagen City Museum. The image of the square is in fact reversed left to right, as was normal for daguerreotypes unless a mirror was used together with the camera. Careful analysis of the photograph suggests that it dates back to July 1840. The exposure time of about 15 minutes in sunlight explains why the only figure to be seen is a man sleeping at the foot of the Pillar of Shame towards the left of the picture.
Its status in the history of Danish photography is rivalled by a portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen
Bertel Thorvaldsen
Bertel Thorvaldsen was a Danish-Icelandic sculptor of international fame, who spent most of his life in Italy . Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen into a Danish/Icelandic family of humble means, and was accepted to the Royal Academy of Arts when he was eleven years old...
sitting at an easel outside his studio in the garden of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at Charlottenborg Palace
Charlottenborg Palace
Charlottenborg Palace is a large town mansion located on the corner of Kongens Nytorv and Nyhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark. Originally built as a residence for Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, it has served as the base of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts since its foundation in 1754...
in Copenhagen. This daguerrotype was taken by the French photographer Aymard Charles Théodore Neubourg, who visited Copenhagen in the summer of 1840. An examination of the circumstances under which it was taken reveals that the date was Sunday, 26 July 1840. It has also been noticed that Thorvaldsen is making the horn sign with what apparently is his left hand although, as a result of the daguerrotype mirror effect, it is actually his right hand. This has been ascribed to the anxiety he must have experienced while facing the new mechanical device which could reveal even the slightest detail.
Several Danes are remembered for their contributions to daguerreotypy. While in Paris in 1848, Anton Melbye
Anton Melbye
Daniel Hermann Anton Melbye was a Danish painter. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and was a private student of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg...
(1818–1875), a marine artist, learnt from Daguerre. Rudolph Striegler
Rudolph Striegler
Rudolph Striegler was one of Denmark's early photographers, specialising in portrait photography.Trained as a picture-framer, Strieger opened Odense's first daguerreotype studio in 1846. With his experience of gold-plating, he was able to combine photography with ornate framing...
, Johan Emilius Bogh and Johan Ludvig Ussing were among those who began to specialize in portrait photography
Portrait photography
Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people , in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject...
opening studios in Copenhagen and the provinces.
Georg Emil Hansen
Georg Emil Hansen
Georg Emil Hansen was one of Denmark's pioneering photographers in the second half of the 19th century. He had his own studio in Copenhagen and later became a successful court photographer.-Early life:...
(1833–1891) from Næstved came from a family of photographers. When his father, Carl Christian Hansen, opened a studio in Copenhagen, he decided to open one of his own. He became one of the most respected photographers of his day, with Christian IX of Denmark
Christian IX of Denmark
Christian IX was King of Denmark from 16 November 1863 to 29 January 1906.Growing up as a prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a junior branch of the House of Oldenburg which had ruled Denmark since 1448, Christian was originally not in the immediate line of succession to the Danish...
and the Danish Royal Family
Danish Royal Family
The Danish Royal Family includes the Queen of Denmark and her family. All members except the Queen hold the title of Prince/Princess of Denmark with the style of His/Her Royal Highness or His/Her Highness. The Queen is styled Her Majesty. The Queen and her siblings belong to the House of...
as customers in the early 1860s. He also excelled in adopting new techniques. He was the first to use paper prints and to make full-length portrait enlargements. He received awards for his exhibitions in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(1862) and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
(1865). In 1867, together with his brother, Niels Christian Hansen, and two other photographers, he set up a photographic firm which later became Hansen, Schou & Weller, suppliers to the royal Danish court.
Carte de visite photography
The technique of carte de visite photographyCarte de visite
The carte de visite was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris, France by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero...
was brought to Denmark by Rudolph Striegler
Rudolph Striegler
Rudolph Striegler was one of Denmark's early photographers, specialising in portrait photography.Trained as a picture-framer, Strieger opened Odense's first daguerreotype studio in 1846. With his experience of gold-plating, he was able to combine photography with ornate framing...
in 1860. It spread rapidly and by the 1870s provided a cheap and attractive alternative to portrait painting for photographers such as Ludvig Grundtvig
Ludvig Grundtvig
Ludvig Grundtvig was a Danish photographer and portrait painter. He based many of his later paintings on his own photographs.-Early life:Born in Nykøbing Falster, Grundtvig studied at the Danish Academy from 1851 to 1857, winning two awards....
(1836–1901) and Adolph Lønborg (1835–1916) in Copenhagen, and Heinrich Tønnies
Heinrich Tønnies
Johan Georg Heinrich Ludwig Tønnies was an early German-Danish photographer who had a studio in Aalborg, Denmark.-Biography:Born in Grünenplan, Germany, he was trained as a glass painter and cutter....
(1856–1903) who opened a studio in Aalborg
Aalborg
-Transport:On the north side of the Limfjord is Nørresundby, which is connected to Aalborg by a road bridge Limfjordsbroen, an iron railway bridge Jernbanebroen over Limfjorden, as well as a motorway tunnel running under the Limfjord Limfjordstunnelen....
.
Heinrich Tønnies
Heinrich Tønnies
Johan Georg Heinrich Ludwig Tønnies was an early German-Danish photographer who had a studio in Aalborg, Denmark.-Biography:Born in Grünenplan, Germany, he was trained as a glass painter and cutter....
(1825–1903) remains to date one of the premier CDV photographers of Denmark. In June of 1856 he began his photographic career as a partner under C. Fritsche in Aalborg and by December of the same year he bought his partner's share of the business and struck out with a studio under his own name. By 1861, Tönnies' business boomed requiring a larger studio and the hiring of assistants, and by 1870 he became a Danish citizen. Ultimately, his family business spanned three-generations and 75 years. The breadth of his photographic products included: Daguerreotypes, calotypes, pannotypes, photo-lithography, stereoscopy, ambrotypes, CDVs, and medallions. It is believed that he produced no less than 75,000 CDVs, many ordered in relation to a large wave of emigration from Nordjylland to North America. Owing to the poverty of Denmark's Vendsyssel region, local demands for inexpensive CDVs persisted in Aalborg right up until World War I, making Tönnies' studio one of the last to produce CDVs in Denmark.
Pietro Boyesen
Pietro Boyesen
Pietro Thyge Boyesen was a Danish photographer who spent most of his professional life in Rome. He is remembered in particular for his portraits of Scandinavians visiting Rome, many of which are now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen....
(1819–1882) was a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
photographer who spent most of his professional life in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. Boyesen had a talent for composition and characterization. In contrast to the boring studio portraits which were so common at the time, Boyesen would have his subjects pose outdoors in intimate Roman settings. By playing with the subjects clothes and their relationship to the surroundings, Boyesen would produce works presenting a somewhat timid but intimate charm.
Frederikke Federspiel
Frederikke Federspiel
Frederikke Jakobine Federspiel was the first female photographer to practice in Denmark. For many years, she ran her own photographic studio in Aalborg, always keeping abreast of the latest developments...
(1839–1913) was one of the very first female photographers in Denmark. At the age of 35, she received training in photography from her family in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany, where her uncle, Poul Friedrich Lewitz, her aunt and cousins were all photographers. In 1876, when registering her business in Aalborg
Aalborg
-Transport:On the north side of the Limfjord is Nørresundby, which is connected to Aalborg by a road bridge Limfjordsbroen, an iron railway bridge Jernbanebroen over Limfjorden, as well as a motorway tunnel running under the Limfjord Limfjordstunnelen....
, she became one of the first officially recognized female photographers in Denmark when she gave her profession as "Photographin", a German word which clearly shows that she was a woman. Specializing in portraits, she also became one of the earliest female members of the Dansk Fotografisk Forening
Dansk Fotografisk Forening
The Dansk Fotografisk Forening or Danish Photographers Association is a non-profit organization for photographers who earn a living from photography. Since 1879, it has been supporting professional photography and assisting its members....
in 1883. One of the first to experiment with magnesium power
Flash powder
Flash powder is a pyrotechnic composition, a mixture of oxidizer and metallic fuel, which burns quickly and if confined produces a loud report. It is widely used in theatrical pyrotechnics and fireworks and was once used for flashes in photography.Different varieties of flash powder are made from...
for flash, she installed electric lamps in her studio when electricity came to Aalborg in 1901.
Kristen Feilberg
Kristen Feilberg
Kristen Feilberg or Christen Schjellerup Feilberg was an early Danish photographer who is known mainly for his images captured far beyond the borders of Denmark. From the 1860s until the 1890s, Feilberg participated in expeditions to Sumatra, Singapore, and Penang...
(1839-1919) stands as another Danish photographer known mainly for his images captured far beyond the borders of Denmark. From the 1860s until the 1890s, Feilberg participated in expeditions to Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, and Penang
Penang
Penang is a state in Malaysia and the name of its constituent island, located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia by the Strait of Malacca. It is bordered by Kedah in the north and east, and Perak in the south. Penang is the second smallest Malaysian state in area after Perlis, and the...
. In 1867, he exhibited photos at an exhibition in Paris and in 1870 he joined an expedition to the Batak lands of East Sumatra, where he successfully recorded scores of ethnographic images.
Christian Hedemann
Christian Hedemann
Christian Jacob Hedemann was a Danish mechanical engineer who settled in Hawaii in 1878 where he worked at the Hana Sugar Plantation and the Honolulu Iron Works. He is however remembered primarily as an avid amateur photographer who helped found the Hawaiian Camera Club...
(1852–1932) counts as among the earliest Danish photographers who emigrated the farthest distance. Though educated in Denmark, he left Copenhagen in 1878 and settled in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. Primarily occupied as a mechanical engineer at the Hana Sugar Plantation, Island of Maui
Maui
The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...
, and later as a technical manager at the Honolulu Iron Works, as an avid amateur photographer he helped found the Hawaiian Camera Club (1889-1893). He became an American citizen in 1903 and in 1909 accepted an appointment as Danish Consul. His remarkable photographs of the Hawaiian royal family and native social elites remain as some of the earliest images available of pre-annexed Hawaii.
Mary Steen
Mary Steen
Mary Dorothea Frederica Steen was a Danish photographer and feminist. At the age of 28, she opened a studio in Copenhagen where she specialized in indoor photography. She later became Denmark's first female court photographer, working not only with the Danish royals but, at the invitation of...
(1856–1939) was a successful photographer in Copenhagen, pioneering indoor photography with pictures of families inside their own homes. Later, as court photographer, she not only photographed the royal family in Denmark but also spent some time in London where she photographed Queen Victoria. She did much to improve working conditions for women and her example encouraged many women to become professional photographers.
Benedicte Wrensted
Benedicte Wrensted
Benedicte Marie Wrensted was a notable Danish-American photographer, who emigrated to the United States after running a studio for a few years in Horsens, Denmark. She is remembered above all for the many photographs she took of the Shoshone native people in Idaho.-Early life:Benedicte Wrensted...
(1859 –1949) was a notable Danish female photographer, who emigrated to the USA in 1894. Wrensted learned her craft from her maternal aunt, Charlotte Borgen, and for a time in the 1880s operated a studio on Torvet 8, in Horsens
Horsens
Horsens is a Danish city in east Jutland. It is the site of the council of Horsens municipality. The city's population is 53,807 and the Horsens municipality's population is 82,835 ....
, Denmark. Much of her photographic career is anchored to her studio in Pocatello
Pocatello, Idaho
Pocatello is the county seat and largest city of Bannock County, with a small portion on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in neighboring Power County, in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. It is the principal city of the Pocatello metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Bannock...
, a small town in southeastern Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
, where she took photographs of the local inhabitants and recorded the growth of the town. Perhaps her most famous work remains her documentary photographs of the Shoshone
Shoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
Great Basin Native Americans which are considered of great anthropological importance. Wrensted became a U.S. citizen in 1912, at age 53, and in the same year ended her career as a photographer. Many of her Native American images are preserved at the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
and National Archives
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...
.
Ludvig Luplau operated in Copenhagen until he emigrated to the U.S.A (circa 1870), where he opened a photography studio in Chicago. His CDV backmarks stated "Ludvig Luplau from Copenhagen," and the Chicago city business directories listed him at a variety of locations in the 1870s-90s. His stereoview backmark advertising claimed Lupalu & Co., of 80 Fourth Street, specialized in both outdoor photography and stereoscopic interiors. Louis Laplau, his son, continued in photography beginning in the 1890s.
Peter Elfelt
Peter Elfelt
Peter Elfelt was a Danish photographer and film director known as the first film pioneer in Denmark when he began making documentary movies in 1897.-Biography:Peter Elfelt was born Peter Lars Petersen in Denmark on 1 January 1866...
(1866–1931), who served his photography apprenticeship in 1893 in Hillerød
Hillerød
Hillerød Kommune is a municipality in Region Hovedstaden . The municipality covers an area of 191 km² , and has a total population of 46,568...
with Carl Rathsack, soon opened a studio of his own together with his two brothers. His work was widely recognized with the result that, in 1900, he was given the title of Photographer to the Royal Danish Court. He took not only a large number of portraits but also landscapes across Denmark. He later became a major name in cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
too.
Other techniques
A number of other techniques developed in parallel with the use of daguerreotypes. The ambrotypeAmbrotype
right|thumb|Many ambrotypes were made by unknown photographers, such as this American example of a small girl holding a flower, circa 1860. Because of their fragility ambrotypes were held in folding cases much like those used for [[daguerreotype]]s...
, using collodium to produce a positive image on glass, and the pannotype, also collodium-based, were both used in Denmark from around 1855. Negative-based
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative may refer to three different things, although they are all related.-A negative:Film for 35 mm cameras comes in long narrow strips of chemical-coated plastic or cellulose acetate. As each image is captured by the camera onto the film strip, the film strip advances so that...
paper prints, used from the beginning of the 1850s, were produced on salt paper
Salt print
The salt print was the dominant paper-based photographic process for producing positive prints during the period from 1839 through approximately 1860....
until around 1857 when salt was replaced by albumen
Albumen print
The albumen print, also called albumen silver print, was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative...
. Collodion emulsion chloride paper was used from 1865 and in 1880 gelatin emulsion paper
Gelatin silver print
Gelatin silver prints were the dominant photographic process nearly from the period of their introduction in the 1880s until the 1960s when they were eclipsed by consumer color photography. As such, the gelatin silver or black-and-white print represents a primary form of visual documentation in the...
was introduced.
Growing popularity
Thanks to the increasing availability of simpler techniques, amateur photography gained popularity at the beginning of the 20th century. Sigvart WernerSigvart Werner
Sigvart Werner was a Danish amateur photographer who gained fame through his artistic landscape photographs, published in book form....
and Julius Møller were among the many who were influenced by the pictorialist
Pictorialism
Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...
trend, concentrating on pictorial landscape and genre photography.
From the 1890s, the Detroit Publishing Company used the Photochrom
Photochrom
Photochrom"Photochrom" is the spelling used by the Library of Congress, for historical reasons, in its classification and description of its collection of such images. Variants of the spelling exist, both in English and in German. "Photochrome" is the English spelling used in some contexts, e.g....
technique based on chromolithography
Chromolithography
Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrom is frequently used...
to produce a large number of colour postcards, many of European cityscapes. In their collection, there are several views of Copenhagen taken between 1890 and 1900.
Benefitting from the advent of postcards, Mary Willumsen
Mary Willumsen
Mary Birgitte Cecilie Magdalene Willumsen was a Danish photographer who, as early as 1916, sold postcards with photographs of women in scanty clothing or nude postures taken at Copenhagen's Helgoland beach establishment. She discontinued her work when the police began to show interest in kiosks...
(1884–1961) photographed women in scanty clothing or nude at the Helgoland beach facility in Copenhagen. Between 1916 and 1920, she took many such photographs which she sold at a nearby kiosk. The operation was discontinued when the police began to take an interest. Many of the compositions are now considered to have considerable artistic merit.
Press and documentary photography
Danish Union of Press Photographers
The Danish Union of Press Photographers , a trade union, is the oldest national organization for newspaper photographers in the world...
(Pressefotografforbundet) is claimed to be the world's first national organization for newspaper photographers. It was founded in 1912 in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
by six press photographers. Today it has over 800 members.
One of the earliest and most successful press photographers was Danish-American Jacob Riis
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis was a Danish American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific...
(1849–1914) who campaigned for social reform in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Essentially a journalist, he took up photography only after he had emigrated to America. A prominent user of flash
Flash (photography)
A flash is a device used in photography producing a flash of artificial light at a color temperature of about 5500 K to help illuminate a scene. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light...
, he was able to publish indoor scenes of the slums of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, contributing to the implementation of "model tenements". He is now regarded as a pioneer in photography.
While some Danish newspapers started to include photographs in the 1890s, it was only in the 1950s that press photography was introduced throughout the country. Taking the French-based international photographic bureau Magnum
Magnum Photos
Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo...
as a model, Jesper Høm
Jesper Høm
Ib Jesper Brieghel Høm was a Danish photographer and film director. After opening his own studio in Copenhagen, he travelled widely, finally working for Agence VISA in Paris. Jesper Høm was a co-founder of Copenhagen's Delta Photos, an organization designed to inspire and assist press photographers...
, Gregers Nielsen and others set up Delta Photos, a group designed to support journalistic photography.
Delta Photos was dissolved in 1972 but other organizations such as Morten Bo
Morten Bo
Morten Bo , is a Danish photographer who has specialized in documentary work with a social impact. His 15 travelling exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s proved quite controversial. In the 1980s, he turned to more abstract photography with lines, contours and contrasts of light and shade...
's Ragnarok and Henrik Saxgren's 2. Maj sought to promote more clearly defined social and political objectives. Some photographers, such as Viggo Rivad
Viggo Rivad
Viggo Rivad is a Danish photographer who started as an autodidact in 1946 and went on to win numerous competitions in the 1950s and 1960s. Around 1960, he adopted his so-called essay approach resulting in series of related photographs such as Et farvel and Laurits...
and Krass Clement
Krass Clement
Krass Clement Kay Christensen is a Danish photographer who has specialized in documentary work. He graduated as a film director in Copenhagen but soon turned to still photography, publishing his first book Skygger af øjeblikke in 1978. He has since become an active documentary photographer,...
, chose instead to become freelancers.
In the 1970s, Jacob Holdt
Jacob Holdt
Jacob Holdt is a Danish photographer, writer and lecturer. His mammoth work, American Pictures, gained international fame in 1977 for its effective photographic revelations about the hardships of America's lower classes....
(b. 1947) spent a number of years in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
where he photographed scenes of the socially disadvantaged across the country. In his book American Pictures (1977), a worldwide success, he contrasted these with photographs of the American elite, hoping to provide a basis for social reform.
Today Danish press photographers are as active as ever. Jan Grarup
Jan Grarup
Jan Grarup is a Danish photojournalist who has worked both as a staff photographer and as a freelance, specializing in war and conflict photography. He has won many prizes including the World Press Photo award for his coverage of the war in Kosovo....
, in particular, has covered wars and conflicts around the globe over the past 20 years, earning prestigious awards at home and abroad. Claus Bjørn Larsen
Claus Bjørn Larsen
Claus Bjørn Larsen is an award-winning Danish press photographer, now working as a freelance. He gained special recognition in 2000 when he won the World Press Photo of the Year competition for his work in Kosovo.-Early life:...
, also working as a war photographer
War Photographer
War Photographer is a documentary by Christian Frei about the photographer James Nachtwey. As well as telling the story of an iconic man in the field of war photography, the film addresses the broader scope of ideas common to all those involved in war journalism, as well as the issues that they...
, won the World Press Photo of the Year
World Press Photo of the Year
The vote for Press Photo of the Year is taken during the World Press Photo Awards, hosted by the Dutch foundation World Press Photo. The creator of the winning entry receives €10,000 along with "the most prestigious and coveted award in photojournalism"....
award in 1999 for his work in Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
.
Documentary photography has also flourished outside the press. As an example, Jette Bang
Jette Bang
Jette Bang was a Danish photographer and film maker who is remembered for the large collection of photographs and films she took in Greenland, depicting the country and the way of life of its inhabitants before their old culture disappeared....
(1914–1964) was fascinated by Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
and the Greenlanders. From 1936, she took over 12,000 black-and-white photographs of the country and its inhabitants, showing how close to nature people lived.
Art or science?
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters is a Danish non-governmental science Academy, founded 13 November 1742 by permission of the King Christian VI, as a historical Collegium Antiquitatum...
, despite the fact that Daguerre, the inventor, was an artist. In 1842, the artist Johan Frederik Møller was refused a grant from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts for studying photography in France on the grounds that it was not an art. Photographers came within neither the scope of the Academy of Sciences nor that of the Academy of Fine Arts but were regarded as manual workers.
The confusion continued until the end of the 19th century when artists began to use photography as an aid to painting. Notable examples are Peder Severin Krøyer
Peder Severin Krøyer
Peder Severin Krøyer , known as P.S. Krøyer, was a Norwegian-Danish painter. He is one of the best known and beloved, and undeniably the most colorful of the Skagen Painters, a community of Danish and Nordic artists who lived, gathered or worked in Skagen, Denmark, especially during the final...
, Jens Ferdinand Willumsen
Jens Ferdinand Willumsen
Jens Ferdinand Willumsen was a Danish artist who was associated with the movements of Symbolism and Expressionism. Although he was Danish, Willumsen lived almost half of his life in France...
and Laurits Andersen Ring who used photography to obtain more detail and realism in their paintings.
With the advent of photographic societies such as Danske Kamera Piktorialister (Danish Camera Pictorialists) in the 1930s, there was increasing pressure from activists such as H. B. J. Cramer to have photography recognized as an art form. Indeed, the movement continued right up to the 1970s. A counter-movement to pictorialism
Pictorialism
Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...
, the 1920s' Neue Sachlichkeit
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...
was slow to reach Denmark but surfaced in 1948 when Keld Helmer-Petersen
Keld Helmer-Petersen
Keld Helmer-Petersen is a Danish photographer who achieved his international breakthrough in 1948 when he published 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs, a collection of experiments with shapes inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch and the poetic realism of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement...
published his abstract colour studies in 122 Colour Photographs.
Apart from the 20 rather amateurish artistic photography events arranged by Aage Remfeldt between 1946 and 1976 at Charlottenborg
Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen is the official exhibition gallery of the Royal Danish Academy of Art. The palatial residence was constructed in 1672–83 for Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, in the Baroque architectural idiom shared by Holland, England and Denmark.The dowager queen Charlotte Amalie...
, Denmark had few photographic exhibitions until the 1960s. The situation improved in 1963 when Jesper Høm
Jesper Høm
Ib Jesper Brieghel Høm was a Danish photographer and film director. After opening his own studio in Copenhagen, he travelled widely, finally working for Agence VISA in Paris. Jesper Høm was a co-founder of Copenhagen's Delta Photos, an organization designed to inspire and assist press photographers...
arranged an exhibition at the Danish Museum of Art & Design with photographers from New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Another positive influence was Keld Helmer-Petersen
Keld Helmer-Petersen
Keld Helmer-Petersen is a Danish photographer who achieved his international breakthrough in 1948 when he published 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs, a collection of experiments with shapes inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch and the poetic realism of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement...
's book Fragments of a City with photographs of fire escapes and artisically silhouetted cranes taken while he was a student at Chicago's Institute of Design
IIT Institute of Design
Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology , originally founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design.- History :...
, some of which were published in the magazine Perspectiv.
In the winter of 1968–1969, Jens Juncker-Jensen went even further with an excellent exhibition Fotografiet som udtryksmiddel (Photography as a means of expression) for which he drew the very best material from the few photographic books of the time, attracting not only professional and amateur photographers but also architects and television producers. It provided a basis for six TV programmes over the following months. There was, however, little real discussion of photography as an art form.
In the early 1970s, under the influence of the United States where photography had become an academic discipline, exhibitions such as New American Photography in Copenhagen's Bella Center
Bella Center
Bella Center is Scandinavia's largest exhibition and conference center, located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Located in Ørestad between the city centre and Copenhagen Airport, it offers an indoor area of 121.800 m² and has a capacity of 20,000 peopleAmong the larger annual events are the Copenhagen...
presented top artistic photographers of the 1950s and 1960s including Harry Callahan, Jerry Uelsmann
Jerry Uelsmann
Jerry N. Uelsmann is an American photographer.Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan. When he was in high school, his interest in photography sparked. He originally believed that using a camera could allow him to exist outside of himself, to live in a world captured through the lens...
and Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
. This was followed in 1973 by the opening of Galleriet for Creativ Fotografi (Gallery for Creative Photography) in Copenhagen, to be followed in 1977 by the IMAGE gallery in Aarhus
Aarhus
Aarhus or Århus is the second-largest city in Denmark. The principal port of Denmark, Aarhus is on the east side of the peninsula of Jutland in the geographical center of Denmark...
which encouraged experimental photography. Subsequent exhibitions involved the landscape photographer Kirsten Klein
Kirsten Klein
Kirsten Klein is a Danish photographer who since the mid-1970s has lived on the island of Mors. She has become one of Denmark's foremost landscape photographers, developing a highly characteristic, somewhat melancholic style, frequently achieved by employing older photographic techniques.-Early...
, the pioneers of staged photography Nanna Bisp Büchert and Lis Steincke, as well as the magic realist Per Bak Jensen
Per Bak Jensen
Per Bak Jensen , one of Denmark's leading artistic photographers, is a pioneer of modern landscape photography. His desolate images of nature or industrial sites often convey an almost metaphysical impression. His unusual subjects include corn stubble, twigs in the snow or a few isolated rocks...
.
In the 1990s, after Per Bak Hansen had joined the teaching staff at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, it was clear that photography had been accepted as an art form. As evidence, in October 2004, for the very first time, a number of the Academy's students and graduates presented their photographs at an exhibition in Copenhagen's Galleri Asbæk under the common title ”Eye of the Beholder – et blik på portrættet”.
Contemporary photographers
Recognizing the growing status of photography as an art form, artists such as Richard WintherRichard Winther
Richard Winther was considered one of the major Danish artists of the 20th century. He explored the arts extensively and his prolific career focused mainly on painting, graphics, photography and sculpture...
, Stig Brøgger, Jytte Rex, Peter Brandes
Peter Brandes
Peter Brandes is a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist and photographer.Brandes' art is abstract and often in brown colours. He had his breakthrough as artist in the beginning of the 1980s...
and Ane Mette Ruge have actively contributed to its development. On the digital front, younger artists like Lisa Rosenmeier have combined classical techniques of art and photography with digitized forms of expression.
Some of Denmark's more widely recognized contemporary photographers are:
- Rigmor MydtskovRigmor MydtskovRigmor Mydtskov was a Danish court photographer who is remembered for her portraits of artists performing in Danish theatres but especially for her many portraits of Queen Margrethe and other members of the Danish royal family....
(1925–2010) was a DanishDenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
court photographer who is remembered both for her portraits of artists performing in Danish theatres but also for her many portraits of Queen MargretheMargrethe II of DenmarkMargrethe II is the Queen regnant of the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1972 she became the first female monarch of Denmark since Margaret I, ruler of the Scandinavian countries in 1375-1412 during the Kalmar Union.-Early life:...
and other members of the Danish royal family. Realizing that people in such positions tend to act as if masked, she sought to portray the person behind the mask, although she often succeeded in maintaining a little of the secrecy. As a portrait photographer, she was gentle, intuitive and confident. Her life's work is a result of a constant, concentrated effort.
- Per Bak JensenPer Bak JensenPer Bak Jensen , one of Denmark's leading artistic photographers, is a pioneer of modern landscape photography. His desolate images of nature or industrial sites often convey an almost metaphysical impression. His unusual subjects include corn stubble, twigs in the snow or a few isolated rocks...
(born 1949) seeks to capture timelessness or "the being of places" in his work. A pioneer of modern landscape photography, his topics are unusual: a field of corn stubble, thistles, or twigs lying in the snow. Much of his recent work includes photographs from IcelandIcelandIceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
and GreenlandGreenlandGreenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
, some with stark images of minerals and rocks. While he is extremely attentive to angle, light and exposure, he never manipulates his photographs once they have been taken. He has successfully exhibited across Denmark for many years and more recently in New York, London and Paris.
- Krass ClementKrass ClementKrass Clement Kay Christensen is a Danish photographer who has specialized in documentary work. He graduated as a film director in Copenhagen but soon turned to still photography, publishing his first book Skygger af øjeblikke in 1978. He has since become an active documentary photographer,...
(born 1946) graduated as a film director but soon turned to still photography, publishing his first book Skygger af øjeblikke (Shadows of the Moment) in 1978. He has since become an active documentary photographer, focusing on people from both Denmark and elsewhere. His earlier work is black and white but since 2000 he has also worked with colour.
- Kirsten KleinKirsten KleinKirsten Klein is a Danish photographer who since the mid-1970s has lived on the island of Mors. She has become one of Denmark's foremost landscape photographers, developing a highly characteristic, somewhat melancholic style, frequently achieved by employing older photographic techniques.-Early...
(born 1945) studied portrait and museum photography before specializing in landscapes. Her black-and-white photographs often make use of older techniques such as cyanotypeCyanotypeCyanotype is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue print. The process was popular in engineering circles well into the 20th century. The simple and low-cost process enabled them to produce large-scale copies of their work, referred to as blueprints...
and platinum printing. Concentrating on landscapes, she conveys a sensitive, poetic and often melancholic mood. Since 1976, she has lived on the Danish island of MorsMors (island)Mors or Morsø is a 367.7 km2 land locked island in the shallow sound called Limfjorden in Denmark. As of 1 January 2010, it has a population of 21,800. The main town on the island is called Nykøbing Mors. Geologically Mors is unique...
where she has photographed the ever-changing countryside and coastline.
- Steen Brogaard (born 1961) began his career in Copenhagen in 1984 photographing GreenpeaceGreenpeaceGreenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
meetings and demonstrations. In 1987, while in the United States, he was contacted by a Danish gossip magazine where he learnt the technique of photographing celebrities. Since the late 1990s, he has been a court photographer, following the lives of the Crown PrinceFrederik, Crown Prince of DenmarkFrederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, Count of Monpezat, is the heir apparent to the throne of Denmark. Frederik is the elder son of Queen Margrethe II and Henrik, the Prince Consort.-Name and christening:...
, the Crown PrincessMary, Crown Princess of DenmarkMary, Crown Princess of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat, is the wife of Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark...
and their family. This has allowed him to travel widely in ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and the Far EastFar EastThe Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
. One of his recent interests is Denmark and the Danes, examining "what they do best in a great little country".
- Asger Carlsen (born 1973), who now lives in New York, has had considerable success with the cleverly doctored black-and-white images presented in his book Wrong. Everyday scenes suddenly become depictions of a surreal alternate reality, bordering on hallucinations. Carlsen explains his approach as "an expression of never really belonging anywhere."
- Astrid Kruse JensenAstrid Kruse JensenAstrid Kruse Jensen is a Danish photographer who specializes in artistic night photography where she brings out the mysteriously unreal, working on the play between artificial light and darkness...
(born 1975, educated in the NetherlandsNetherlandsThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and ScotlandScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
) specializes in photographs taken at night which evoke the zone between reality and imagination. Carefully combining the effects of artificial light with the surrounding darkness, she creates mysterious images of lakes, swimming pools and solitary figures in the twilight. Since 2003, she has participated in key exhibitions in Denmark and elsewhere.
- Jacob Aue SobolJacob Aue SobolJacob Aue Sobol is a Danish photographer. He has worked around the world, including in East Greenland, Guatemala, Tokyo, Bangkok and Copenhagen.Since 2007 Sobol has been a nominee at Magnum Photos...
(born 1976) studied at FatamorganaFatamorgana (photo school)Fatamorgana is a Danish school of art photography in Copenhagen. Founded by Morten Bo in 1999, the school offers one-year introductory courses, divided up into two semesters, covering various aspects of documentary and conceptual photography...
, the Danish School of Art Photography. His first book Sabine presents vivid pictures of his Greenlandic girlfriend and the remote village where she lives. For his series on the Gomez Brito family from Quiché in GuatemalaGuatemalaGuatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
, he won the 2005 World Press PhotoWorld Press PhotoWorld Press Photo is an independent, non-profit organization based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Founded in 1955 the organization is known for holding the world's largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest....
prize for Daily Life Stories. Commenting on his book I, Tokyo, Miranda Gavin appreciates how "the sensitivity of his approach shines through the work and sets him apart as one of a new generation of photographers with the ability to allow eroticism and danger to seep through his images without becoming sordid or clichéd."
- Klaus Thymann (born 1974) lives in LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. His HYBRIDS project was published in 2007 and featured documentary photography with a global perspective exploring peculiar hybrid cultures around the planet, such as Snow Polo in St. Mortiz, Gay Rodeo in LA, Underwater Striptease in ChileChileChile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Underground Gardening in TokyoTokyo, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
and more.
Photographic museums and galleries in Denmark
- National Museum of Photography, the Royal Library, Copenhagen.
- Fotografisk CenterFotografisk CenterFotografisk Center is an exhibition space in Copenhagen, Denmark, dedicated to international and Danish photographic art. Since 1 February 2011 it has been based in the Tap E building in the Carlsberg area on the border between Vesterbro and Valby.-History:...
, Copenhagen - Annexone.org, Copenhagen
- Danish Museum of Photographic Art, OdenseOdenseThe city of Odense is the third largest city in Denmark.Odense City has a population of 167,615 and is the main city of the island of Funen...
. - Phototek Esbjerg, EsbjergEsbjergEsbjerg Municipality is a municipality in Region of Southern Denmark on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark. Its mayor is Johnny Søtrup, from the Venstre political party...
- Galleri Image, AarhusAarhusAarhus or Århus is the second-largest city in Denmark. The principal port of Denmark, Aarhus is on the east side of the peninsula of Jutland in the geographical center of Denmark...
- Danmarks Fotomuseum, HerningHerningHerning Municipality is a municipality in Region Midtjylland on the Jutland peninsula in western Denmark. The municipality covers an area of 1,336 km² and a total population of 84,208...
See also
- History of photographyHistory of photographyThe first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.- Etymology :The word photography derives from the Greek words phōs light, and gráphein, to write...
- Culture of DenmarkCulture of DenmarkThe culture of Denmark, while rich in the arts, has some general characteristics associated with Danish society and everyday culture. Modesty, punctuality but above all equality are important aspects of the Danish way of life...