Keld Helmer-Petersen – 122 Colour Photographs

Errata Editions 2012

Keld Helmer-Petersen’s 122 Colour Photographs published in Copenhagen in 1948 prefigured the work of Willam Eggleston and Stephen Shore by two decades with the aim to make pictures that would only work in color, and not in black and white. By concentrating on the mundane and the everyday 122 Colour Photographs deserves credit as a remarkably early and successful attempt to put color photography on the map. Books on Books #14 presents Helmer-Petersen’s masterwork along with an essay by the Danish art critic and historian Mette Sandbye called Colour Cool.

The Errata Editions Books on Books series is an on-going publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints nor facsimiles but comprehensive studies of rare books. Each in this series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or prohibitively expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page, enabling further study into the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each in the Books on Books series contains; illustrations of every page in the original photobook being featured; contemporary essays by established writers on photography composed specially for this series; production notes about the production of the original edition; biography and bibliography information about each artist.