Photography in Denmark
Overview of the topic
In Denmark, photography 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 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 portraits of his Greenlandic girlfriend, and Per Bak Jensen, who introduced a new perspective to modern landscape photography. Press photography has prospered too under Jan Grarup and Claus Bjørn Larsen, who have covered wars and conflicts of global importance over the past 20 years.
History
Daguerreotypes
Christian Tuxen Falbe, a Danish marine officer, was in Paris 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 songwriter and a pioneer in telegraphy.
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This entry incorporates text from “Photography in Denmark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.