1920-2013
Keld Helmer-Petersen (20 August 1920 – 6 March 2013) was 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. The book brought modernism to Danish photography and earned Helmer-Petersen a grant for a year's study at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950. As a result, photography became his profession. In his Chicago series published in Fragments of a City, Helmer-Petersen became form's uncompromising proponent. He later developed interest in hidden figurative expression as in his series Deformationer (1976–84) and Frihavnen (1989).