HELMER-PETERSEN, K[eld]. (1920-2013)

[Photobook] 122 Farvefotografier / 122 Colour Photographs

København [Copenhagen]: Schoenberg, 1948. First Edition. Hardcover. First Printing of this foundational photobook, establishing color photography as an artistic medium ("The following reproductions have been selected from my attempts, through the medium of colour photography, to create pictures of somewhat greater aesthetic value than that usually aimed at by colour photographers.") Brief essay by Svend Kragh-Jacobsen, in Danish and English. Royal 8vo (340 x 242mm): [8]pp, with 122 magnificent full-page plates from color photographs. Original slate-blue plain paper covered boards, buff paper spine lettered in black. An excellent example, tightly bound and clean throughout (end papers barely toned, cover tips lightly rubbed), wanting the dust jacket and plain card slipcase. Parr & Badger I, pp. 202-203. Fine. Item #BB2259

According to most histories of photography, color work came of age in the early 1970s, with the photographs of William Eggleston and Stephen Shore. But as Parr and Badger make clear, this book of photographs, made mostly during the Second World War, "deserves credit as a singular, remarkably early and largely successful attempt to make colour photography work." Inspired by the realism of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, Helmer-Petersen focused on the quotidian, generating geometric abstractions out of curved doorknobs, crates of tomatoes, industrial metal drums, and straw-colored buildings against milky blue skies. "His aim was to make the kinds of pictures that could only work in colour, and not in black and white. This is not as easy as it sounds, since it requires both paying attention to the issue of color and preventing it from becoming the dominant concern. He achieved his ends in a similar way to Shore or Eggleston, by concentrating on the mundane and the everyday." N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).

Price: $724.00