Keld Helmer-Petersen    

Danish | 1920-2013

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Keld Helmer-Petersen is recognised as a pioneer of colour photography. His self-published book 122 Colour Photographs, appeared in 1948. The photographs were ground-breaking in their use of colour as subject and their abstract qualities. As Martin Parr observes ‘...for the 1940s it was sensational – way ahead of its time.’

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I don’t want my pictures to ‘look like something’. They should just look like pictures.

    Keld Helmer-Petersen, Life, November 28, 1949

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But significantly, over a career that spanned six decades, the vast majority of Helmer-Petersen’s work involved black and white photography – often portraying a very graphic sensibility achieved by exposing high-contrast film negatives.

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Keld Helmer-Petersen lived and worked in Copenhagen, Denmark. From the late 1960s onwards he taught

at the School of Architecture, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen; and at the School of Graphic Design, Copenhagen. Helmer-Petersen had his first ever London solo exhibition at Rocket in 2005 at the age of 85. This exhibition featured some of his 1940s colour photographs; vintage Chicago Silhouettes from Keld’s time spent studying at the Institute of Design, Illinois; and his colour series Danish Beauty, an abstract vision of the industrial areas of Copenhagen. Rocket presented further solo exhibitions in 2008 and 2012.

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In June 2019 the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen presented a major retrospective exhibition based on the archive of photographs that Keld Helmer-Petersen bequeathed to the institution. This exhibition continued into 2020 in celebration of Keld’s centenary.