Keld Helmer-Petersen is a Danish photographer who is well renowned for his work with abstract colors in photography. The work he excelled at was with his ‘black light’ work which is very simple and defined, consisting of only a strong black and white, silhouetting the edited image causing it to become abstract. The images of his have been taken of, usually, “ugly” objects and eye-sores such as scaffolding or barbed wire. The images are unique in terms of the high contrast that causes abstract lines and features to become bold and eye-catching. He has also used this technique to create interesting landscape images that I have studied and tired to imitate myself.

Helmer-Petersen was born and grew up in the Østerbro quarter of Copenhagen. He started taking photographs in 1938, when he received a Leica camera as a graduation present. He was inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the experiments at The Bauhaus in Germany and by Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Chicago. He achieved fame for his colour photographs but he also published several books of black and white images that explore dramatic contrasts of tone.

In some, we are only presented with images that are black and white. All mid tones have been removed. He created and found these images, using both cameras and flat bed scanners to achieve the effects he was looking for. These books are beautifully designed and encourage us to consider the space around the image and the accompanying text as integral to the meaning of the work.

MY PHOTOGRAPHS/DESIGN PROCESS

I used Photoshop to create similar images to that of Helmer-Petersen’s work. I aimed t crop the images to create make them more abstract, however aiming to not lose quality while digitally editing.

Using the threshold tool in photoshop allowed me to create an contrasted image similar to that of Helmer-Peterson’s.

I experimented with other images, however the density of each image affected the threshold tool significantly, making the image much more abstract and difficult to comprehend, (as seen below):

Natural aspects, such as dense trees and leaves also made the process difficult, hence why natural landscapes didn’t create the right result I was looking for during the experimentation process.

Final Image