The Danish Photo book

In Mellanrummet we present a slice of Danish photographic history from 1919 to 2019. A selection of about 50 to 75 photobooks are exhibited, including “Dyrehaven” by Sigvart Werner, which was published in 1919 and is considered to be the first Danish photobook. The exhibition has been produced as part of the ongoing work to edit an upcoming book about 200 good and important photobooks over a 100-year period.

What is a photobook?

So what qualifies a book to be a photobook, and what qualifies it to be selected as a particularly good and important photobook? This particular selection includes photo-based art projects, other photo projects, and special-subject books whose photos have a high artistic level. The aim has been to produce a compilation that is not primarily a canonisation of specific photobooks but instead gives some indications about what is and can be considered to be good and important photobooks in the history of Danish photography. The curators and editors are Carsten Brandt, who has written about photography for many years, Tommy Kirkegaard, antiquarian book dealer, and Finn Larsen, who is a photographer and visual artist.

The exhibition is part of the Copenhagen Photo Festival 2019.