Keld Helmer-Petersen (23 August 1920 – 6 March 2013) was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs.
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. At an early stage, he became aware of the trends in international photography; in the 1940s he subscribed to the US Camera Annual and in this period became familiar with German inter-war photography, which had developed at the Bauhaus and in the Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) movement.
