Kirsten Klein (1945, Denmark)
Kirsten Klein is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed photographers and possibly its best landscape photographer. When she was a young girl Kirsten moved from Copenhagen to a home in the countryside, 75 meters from the sea and two kilometres to the nearest neighbour. Her trips to and from school were quite lengthy and allowed her plenty of time to take in the changing countryside. This created the foundation for her sustained interest in, and inspiration to work with, landscape.
“I have an inner impulse to take pictures,” says Kirsten. “Light and shadow are my driving force, and I experience an irresistible urge to preserve the mood of the moment. The reason that I chose photography as my form of expression in early youth was that I also wanted to travel and portray different people’s ways of life. Photography can show how people are affected by their natural environments and surroundings.”
Kirsten’s photography is sensual, poetic and often melancholic portrayals of landscapes and people. She has created a personal, mythical and sometimes dramatic expression by focusing on nature. It is like looking at an enchanted world through a new filter, a world that is in constant change throughout the day and characterised by the seasons’ varying light. Kirsten is fascinated by the interaction between light and shadow in the natural world, and seldom takes colour photos. “I am most interested in taking black-and-white pictures,” she says. “They have a stronger appeal to the imagination and emotions. I see multiple colours in the hazy, soft grey-tones, and this allows me to impart nuances.”
With her characteristic style and sharp eye for both the magnificence and details in nature, Kirsten has many similarities with the famous American nature photographer Ansel Adams. Through photography Kirsten seeks the moments that have a seed of eternity in them – a tiny leaf, a bulb of garlic or a thousand-year-old tree trunk. In her pictures nature is expressed in a holistic sense and is barely touched by human hands. It is as if her landscape depictions are removed from and unaffected by man or time.
The majority of Kirsten’s pictures are taken in the meadows on the Danish island of Mors where she lives. However, it is not just the Danish landscape that has captured Kirsten’s attention. After many years of travelling, she has created unique interpretations of Nordic, Irish, French and Mexican landscapes.
At the end of the 1980s she started to work with old photographic techniques such as pinhole camera photography, platinum prints, cyanotypes and photographic polymer gravure.
She has illustrated innumerable books and received a range of distinctions and donations. Her art adorns the walls of national and local buildings and can be seen in places like the Danish Museum of Photographic Art and the Danish Museum of Photography, and is featured on Danish postal stamps. She is the only female Danish photographer that has been awarded a lifetime scholarship from the Danish Arts Foundation.
