Talk:Photography in Denmark

Riis

 * One of the earliest and most successful Danish press photographers was Jacob Riis (1849-1914). . . .

Riis was indeed from Denmark. Calling him a "press photographer" may be a bit of a stretch, but he did indeed take photographs that appeared in the press, so OK. However, he learned how to take photographs in the US and he took photographs in the US. Unusually for a photographer, we know when he started to take photographs: January 1888. Presumably by that point he had US nationality. I'm not aware of any Danish angle to his photography, or indeed to him as a photographer. -- Hoary (talk) 10:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Ipigott responds on User talk:Hoary (this edit): As for the nationality of Jacob Riis, I can only say that he is something of a hero in Denmark. The foreign ministry has arranged many exhibitions of his work at embassies throughout the world. If you wish, we could refer to him as "Danish-American".

I [Hoary again] know that he's a hero in Denmark, and I also know that he regarded himself as Danish-American. He certainly merits a mention in this article. However, I'm still unaware of any Danish angle to his photography. He became interested in photography in the US, he picked up his skills in the US (with the help of Americans who weren't Danish-American), he photographed and exhibited the results in the US -- and all exclusively so, I believe. But I'm happy to be proved wrong on any of these claims, none of which I've bothered to look up in a biography of Riis.

Incidentally, the article on Riis was promoted to "Good Article" by somebody who was very generous in awarding "Good Article" or very inattentive. I hadn't noticed that during the years when I'd done no more than defend the article against edits by sillier schoolboys, but when somebody announced a "review" of the "Good Article" status I actually examined the article for the first time and was rather appalled by what I saw -- I certainly didn't think it was good, so I couldn't with a straight face claim it was "Good" either. I did start to rework it, in chronological order, but had only brought Riis to an early point in his career as reporter when, in early September '09, I was distracted. Since then I've done no more than help defend the article against further edits by nitwits. We ought to return there and fix it some time this year; I do have access to good printed materials (in English only) about Riis. -- Hoary (talk) 00:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe the best solution here would simply be to explain that Riis first became interested in photography once he was on American soil? Perhaps one of the reasons the Danes are so keen to include him in their photography histories is that they are proud to see that it was in fact a Dane who first called for social reforms through the medium of reporting.


 * From the sources I have seen, it seems to me that Riis was not just a press photographer but also a reporter in his own right. See, for example, Jacob Riis, Writer With a Camera by Jonathan Sussman. The last sentence in the article sums it all up: "But Riis, most famous for his photographs, also showed a certain strength with the written word that still catches the reader with its wit and charm. His accomplishments will forever remain distinct in the history of journalism." Ipigott (talk) 09:13, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, Riis was very much a reporter. He may, he probably is, now best known as a photographer, but for decades the fact that he'd taken photographs was almost forgotten, and Riis himself regarded his camera as a tool to be used for a particular purpose and, that purpose achieved, then forgotten. As well as being a reporter he was a speaker (social/urban reform evangelist rather than reporter), and the photographs were originally intended for and used as lantern slides. Additionally, the photographs were reproduced as line drawings in some of his published articles. -- Hoary (talk) 09:19, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Pertinent references
In response to Hoary's comments on many of the original references in the article, I have tried to find more reliable, independent sources. There are two problems here: the first is that most of the information on the backgrounds of contemporary photographers comes from their own websites or from the galleries where they exhibit their work. There are indeed sometimes press reports but some of there appear to me to be even more effusive than the photographers own descriptions. Most of the references are of course in Danish - which again is something of a problem as few of those reading the article will be able to understand them. Finally, the CVs or biographies of today's photographers are difficult to find anywhere but on their own sites.

The question then is whether this information should be included in the article (or in subsequent Wikipedia biographies) or whether these details should be omitted if other independent sources are not available.

There are of course two excellent Danish sources, both from Gyldendal, Denmark's largest publishing house. The first is their digital encyclopedia Den store Danske, the other is the comprehensive work on Denmark's history of photography, Dansk Fotografihistorie. While I have frequently drawn on these, I feel that the value of the article can often be enhanced by drawing on other sources. Ipigott (talk) 13:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * This kind of thing is always tricky and it's hard to give simple rules or even simple rules of thumb. Have any of the larger exhibitions been accompanied by large, informative catalogues? -- Hoary (talk) 14:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * In my experience, the catalogues at Danish exhibitions add little. if anything, to the information on the webpages of the photographers. (Rather like the Zoriah effect!) They concentrate on descriptions of the individual photographs or the latest theme(s) chosen by the photographer. But I'll continue searching, especially in connection with contemporary photographers. Ipigott (talk) 08:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Candidate for GA?
I have just about finished work on Photography in Denmark as it now stands. If anyone thinks it is worthwhile trying to upgrade its status to GA, I would be happy to assist. I realize this usually requires quite a bit of work and so I hope I will not be the only one to carry the can. Ipigott (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hang on in there! (I've answered more fully elsewhere). -- Hoary (talk) 15:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Art, science, technology, whatever
Something seems odd to me here (after markup stripping):

In the 1990s, after Per Bak Hansen had joined the teaching staff at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, it was clear that photography had been accepted as an art form. In October 2004, a number of the Academy's students and graduates went on to present their work at Galleri Asbæk under the common title ”Eye of the Beholder – et blik på portrættet”.

Contemporary photographers

Photography has also benefitted from an enhanced status thanks to a number of artists including Richard Winther, Stig Brøgger, Jytte Rex, Peter Brandes and Ane Mette Ruge. The growing interest in photography as an art form in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts has contributed to its development with new names such as Lisa Rosenmeier mixing classical techniques of art and photography with digitized forms of expression.

From my Japanese perspective, the notion that an academy's students and grads would put on a show together in a gallery seems very humdrum. Is Galleri Asbæk perhaps particularly significant? Or am I, or is the explanation, missing something else?

At or very near the end of one section, we learn that photography had cemented its status as art. (Pause for a personal rant: No surprise here; this trend was international, has made a lot of money for a small number of people, and has made the level of exhibited photography far less interesting than it would have been otherwise. Rant over.) Immediately at the start of the next section, we read something that may or may not be compatible with this but is not clearly presented as a development and instead looks like an alternative explanation. Whatever's intended, it looks uncomfortable.

There's also what appears to be a curiously bathetic turn as the discussion of art in photography moves to a note on a court photographer. Court photographers are normally highly trained in the art of being anodyne, but I was willing to be persuaded that this one was unusual. Clicking on the link provided, I see nothing surprising: instead, she seems a consummate commercial portrait photographer. Again, I'm not knocking her achievements, and I'm willing to believe that she deserves a paragraph in this article, but the positioning seems odd. -- Hoary (talk) 15:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You make a number of valid points here. First of all, I had not realized there was an issue of juxtaposition here as I have been dealing with each section separately. I think it can be easily overcome by reprasing the Contemporary photographers intro as follows:


 * Recognizing the growing status of photography as an art form, artists such as Richard Winther, Stig Brøgger, Jytte Rex, Peter Brandes and Ane Mette Ruge have contributed to its development. On the digital front, younger artists like Lisa Rosenmeier have combined classical techniques of art and photography with digitized forms of expression.


 * As for the exhibition by students, I agree that this may sound rather underwhelming but it was obviously an important event for photographers in Denmark as I have seen it widely reported. Indeed, Mette Sandbye who authored the referenced article obviously saw this as a key event as never before had Academy students exhibited photographs. Perhaps it should be rephrased but it needs to be there.


 * The reason the court photographer appears at the top of the list is simply an accident of chronology. That could perhaps be solved by an introductory line such as: "In chronological order, some of Denmark's more widely recognized contemporary photographers are listed below." And as for commercial interests, all the Danish court photographers seem to have their own businesses too. Interestingly, it was the Queen who called Rigmor Mydtskov at her studio one day to ask for an appointment! When Mydtskov died earlier this year, her work received wide recognition on Danish TV and in the press. So I think she needs to be included.


 * I'll try to brush the article up along these lines in the hope that it will be less confusing. -- Ipigott (talk) 10:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

"No such thing as society"
Admirers of British photography, as well as those who remember the avenger of the Malvinas, may recognize the title.

I like what I see in this article. But the emphasis within it seems odd. There are short descriptions of a number of worthy sounding individual photographers, but not much on photographers as a whole. For every Krass Clement, there must be a million -- well, a hundred thousand average Jo(sephin)es who take pictures, and among them a thousand better-than-average Svens who try hard to do well, potter around in darkrooms, buy photo magazines (and not just for the nudes or the cameraporn) and generally constitute a subsociety within which the truly talented (or just hardworking, or "artistic", or lucky) can flourish. I don't suppose there's all that much to say about specifically Danish "vernacular photography", but can we perhaps learn about the Danish equivalents (if any) of Creative Camera? -- Hoary (talk) 15:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, there is just a little bit on amateur photography under Growing popularlty but I must say I did not really have amateurs (= the masses) in mind when I drafted the article. I saw it rather as an extension to the article about the Culture of Denmark, similar in emphasis to those on Art of Denmark and Architecture of Denmark (which I spent quite some time on last year) and Music of Denmark (which I am just starting to work on now). All of these basically trace the history and current development of the sectors, concentrating on excellence and outstanding developments, especially those which are specific to the country itself.


 * In all the research I have been doing on Danish photography, I have in fact found very little about how it has affected the masses. Indeed, even if I had been able to find information specific to Denmark, I would be surprised if there was much to distinguish the way amateur photography had developed there compared to that in the rest of Europe. Perhaps it would have been possible to develop a case for photographs taken by amateurs during the German occupation (see images at Occupation of Denmark), or perhaps how Danish schoolkids were among the first to take to digital photography, but as far as I know, there are few really distinguishing features worthy of inclusion in a WP article. I have had a good look at the other articles listed under Category:Photography by country and I don't see much emphasis on amateur photography there either. In any case, before developing a section on amateur photography in Denmark, I think it would be far more useful to extend the article on Vernacular photography itself.


 * There is this site for Creative Creations (Denmark) but I think it's a one man show. In any case, there's very little to build on and few, if any, references.


 * So for once, dear friend, I must beg to differ - unless of course you can provide some solid leads for me to follow... -- Ipigott (talk) 13:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately those solid leads would almost certainly be in Danish, which I can't read.

Let's consider Krass Clement. Born 1946, trained in the cinema, worked in the cinema, turned to photography, had his book Skygger af øjeblikke published in 1978. No offence intended to the photographer, but why would anyone -- starting with a potential publisher -- have been interested in Skygger af øjeblikke? Publishers can only very rarely choose to publish according to their own judgement of the intrinsic worth of what they're shown and their own chances of persuading booksellers, as "blank slates" to stock it; they have to factor in such things as coverage and likely coverage in the press. I'd guess that the publisher thought that Skygger af øjeblikke would sell, if only modestly. What gave it this confidence?

Consider a coeval, Chris Killip. In 1972 "he was commissioned to photograph Bury St Edmunds and Huddersfield" (by whom I don't know, sorry), "and in 1975 he won a two-year fellowship from Northern Arts to photograph the northeast of England" (ah hah, an arts-subsidizing infrastructure); "Creative Camera devoted its entire May issue to this work." Creative Camera then being a magazine with, oh, I don't know, perhaps one fiftieth the circulation of Amateur Photographer but (depending on your tastes) between two and fifty times the worthwhile photography content. When Killip's first commercially-published book came out, at least a couple of thousand people would have known of his work. I'm sure that Secker & Warburg didn't expect it to make much money for them, but publication also wasn't capricious or charitable. -- Hoary (talk) 00:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * On Krass Clement: I have only attempted to reproduce a summary of the information I could find about him. (As you have probably seen, there is a fuller version on the KC page itself.) I don't know anything about the details of the publication of his first book but I would not be a bit surprised if he had not covered the initial costs himself. This was quite a common practice at the time and was often a good way for artists and authors to make an initial impression. However, if I really try to delve into it much more deeply, I think the outcome might be considered "original research" which is not welcome in WP.


 * I had not realized "Creative Camera" was a magazine. (Does it still exist? I could only find historical info on it.) There are in fact a number of Danish photo magazines too. The most serious one seems to be Filter. I must admit I have never seen a copy and unfortunately I am not in Denmark at the moment and so cannot buy one. As you will see from the linked page, the coverage seems quite interesting but I cannot find any web versions. I see there is also a mission statement in English here. There is also the popular DigitalMagasinet website and the related magazine Digital Foto. And the third one is Zoom, also quite popular. Do you think it would be worthwhile mentioning these in the article? Personally, I do not expect them to be very different from all the other photo magazines and websites you can find for other countries - but for those specifically interested in the Danish scene, they might be worthwhile, especially Filter.


 * I looked at the article on Chris Killip but cannot really see the connection with Clement - unless it was simply that you wanted to point out that Creative Camera had published an article about him. But I was of course pleased to see that Killip had taken a special interest in my native Newcastle! -- Ipigott (talk) 11:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, the idea was that we see that the steppingstones to fame for Killip included regional arts funding (for I presume that this is what "Northern Arts" was or is) and a photographic magazine that had priorities in actual photographs rather than in advising people what gadgets they should buy. (The editor of Creative Camera was famously told by the then very young and completely unknown Tony Ray-Jones that his magazine was -- or its contents were -- "shit". Whereupon he nobly gave TRJ's work a good look, was impressed, and published it. Or something like this: my memory may have scrambled some of the details.) So we know just from Killip's mini-bio that there was a kind of photo-art infrastructure. No doubt it was insufficient, but it was important.


 * I took a look at the link you give for Zoom. The mag does indeed look very dreary -- although of course it could have changed over the decades. Creative Camera was very different, and it wasn't the only noncommercial British camera mag of the time.


 * At about the same in Japan, three "camera magazines" were very important. (The three had previously been five or more. Later they'd become two.) Work by just about every photographer you can think of (including such uncommercial people as Suzuki) appeared several in at least one of these magazines, which served to alert people about their exhibitions, their books (in Japan too, often self-published) etc.


 * For Clement, the biographical information may just not be available, of course. And if it is available, I suppose it will be in Danish.


 * I don't know Newcastle, I regret to say. But I do know that thanks to or via Amber/Side it has been a capital of photography. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Markéta Luskačová, Graham Smith and Chris Steele-Perkins are just some of the others who've worked and exhibited there. -- Hoary (talk) 14:17, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I actually thought you would find Filter much more interesting, particularly the index page from the link where you can at least get an idea of the coverage. You didn't answer my question about whether it would be a good idea to mention the Danish photo mags and possibly related websites. -- Ipigott (talk) 16:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I must have been particularly sleepy when I read the question. Yes, Filter looks far more interesting than the other two (even though little of what I see of it happens to accord with my own taste). I don't find its "mission statement" particularly illuminating (and indeed I tend to wonder why any entity other than a corporation trying to ameliorate its dreadful public image bothers to whip up bromides into a "mission statement"); and I note that however praiseworthy it may be, only four issues have yet emerged. IFF you find somebody significant whose renown is partly attributed to publication in Filter, then by all means let's have the article mention this.


 * I assume that Creative Camera is long dead, and also guess that any Danish magazine of significance in the seventies or eighties would have since declined or disappeared. (Such is the way of magazines the world over. There are exceptions, of course.)


 * Does the book Dansk Fotografihistorie not say anything about particularly significant magazines? As for funding, I think of the Scandinavian nations as civilized (at least until recent lurches to the right); has Denmark not had something like the Arts Council? Has det Danske Kultur Institut not helped? -- Hoary (talk) 00:15, 13 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Dansk Fotografhistorie does not mention magazines.


 * There are in fact two main cultural institutions: the Danish Arts Council (Kunstrådet) and the Danish Arts Foundation (Statens Kunstfond). Read more about the background here. The communes (i.e. municipalities) in Denmark also provide support for art and artists, as does the Danish Film Institute. So if you are good at form filling and have the right contacts, you can do quite well out of it all! -- Ipigott (talk) 10:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I had a look at the sites but (not so surprisingly) couldn't find historical information in English. Perhaps there are books about the matter (in Danish, of course). -- Hoary (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Auntie
This bit reads oddly to me:


 * ''Frederikke Federspiel (1839–1913) was one of the very first female photographers in Denmark. At the age of 35, she received training in photography from her family in Hamburg, where her uncle, Poul Friedrich Lewitz, her aunt and cousins were all photographers.

Emphases added, of course.

So despite being one of the very first, there was one in the previous generation within her very own family, as mentioned in the very next sentence. Er?

I can make several guesses as to what this could all be about, but we should of course depend on the known facts rather than on my guesswork. -- Hoary (talk) 23:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Very simple explanation here. Hamburg - where the aunt and other members of the family worked -is in Germany, not Denmark. -- Ipigott (talk) 10:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Aha! But I'm glad I asked. -- Hoary (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

"new, simpler techniques"

 * With the turn of the century, amateur photography started to develop thanks to new, simpler techniques based on dry plates.

Dry plates themselves had been widely used for two decades. What were those simpler techniques?

(For that matter, the "Kodak" camera, supplied with roll film, had been marketed for over a decade.) -- Hoary (talk) 03:16, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You are right about the wording. It would be better to say something like:


 * Thanks to the increasing availability of simpler techniques, amateur photography started to develop at the beginning of the 20th century.


 * Probably no need to go into technicalities. -- Ipigott (talk) 10:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Tidying it all up
I have been carefully through the whole article once again, repositioning the images, correcting the odd mistake and trying to improve the language. Thanks to all Hoary's work too, the article now looks pretty good. Perhaps it is time to submit it to GA assessment. Ipigott (talk) 10:50, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Done already! -- Hoary (talk) 11:50, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for submitting it for me. Good to see Johnbod has upgraded it to a B for visual arts and that Elehkk has also had a go at it. Both of them are really good. But given the length of the current queue, there might be quite a wait before it reaches the assessment stage. Ipigott (talk) 11:36, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's get physical

 * "He was the first to use paper prints and to make full body size enlargements"

Does this mean life-size(d) enlargements? In the context of photographs such as the one of which this is a tiny reproduction, that would be implausibly big for any photographer other than Avedon and impossibly big for the time. Does it perhaps mean "full-length portraits" (i.e. portraits showing the full length of the sitters)? -- Hoary (talk) 16:04, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for drawing my attention to this message. We are in France at the moment and have had some difficulty with our internet connection. Th "full body size" is a direct quote from the reference given. However, from what you say it is probably a good idea to change it to "full-length portraits" - which I willl now do. Ipigott (talk) 14:31, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

How about including this one
http://fa2.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/assets/45/collection/N267.jpg - this one is interesting because it shows Bertel Thorvaldsen doing the horn sign with his left hand to counteract the possibly diabolical force of the camera. Also it is a very early photo from Denmark and is historically important.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks Maunus for your suggestion. The main reason I had not included this daguerrotype was that the photographer was not Danish but French. As you may know, several continental photographers came to Denmark in 1840 and opened temporary studios in Copenhagen. However, I tend to agree with you that it is an important contribution and will try to work it in. I have indeed found a couple of references to the horn sign too: here and here although I have not been able to follow the arguments given for the precise dating. -- Ipigott (talk) 13:46, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I did not know that the photographer was French, but that might be another point that could be illustrated by including the photo: that continental photographers brought the medium to Denmark.·Maunus· ƛ · 13:49, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well. you can see how I wrote it up. If you read the beginning of the article, you will see that it was not initially the continentals who brought photography to Denmark but Falbe, a Dane, who immediately reported on the invention and brought a camera and daguerreotypes to Denmark only days or weeks after Daguerre announced his invention. It was about six months later that a few Germans, Austrians and Frenchmen visited Copenhagen to take portraits before going on to Sweden. I thought if I went too deeply into this phase of the history, it would detract from the general flow of the article. In any case, thanks for your interest. Good to see there's another Dane around with an interest in these matters. Could I tempt you to look at the GA nomination of the article, possibly with a view to assessment by an interested party? -- Ipigott (talk) 16:14, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was looking at the article because I was thinking of reviewing it. I may still choose to review it, Im just a little short of time. I like the way you wrote up the Thorvaldsen part, my one quarrel at first sight is that there are maybe a little too few citations. I'll give it a look when I have alittle more time on my hands.·Maunus· ƛ · 16:20, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Benedicte Wrensted
What about including some of this: A Danish photographer of Idaho Indians: Benedicte Wrensted. Joanna Cohan Scherer 2006 University of Oklahoma Press ·Maunus· ƛ · 11:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Category renaming proposal
I have proposed here that Category:Danish photography should be renamed Category:Photography in Denmark. I give my reasoning there; you are welcome to add your comment there. -- Hoary (talk) 12:59, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

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