Jacob Holdt and his American images - Hans

Recently I was persuaded by my fellow Krogerup students to pay a visit to the museum of Louisiana, positioned in the immidiate vicinity of the school. Normally I'm as about as easy to drag to a museum as a hardcore alcoholic to an AA meeting, but peer presure once again reigns supreme as means of persuasion.

So off we went: halfway there I realized I'd stumbled upon Holdt earlier in my short life, somewhere a couple thousand gigabytes ago on the internet. His webpage, www.american-pictures.com, is worth a visit fo' sho'. We entered - being students at Krogerup spares us the admission - and headed for the exhibition, positioned in the western end of the museum. The images depicted american life in all its glory and horror, instantly capturing the attention of an otherwise hesistant museum-goer, read, moi. Drug abuse, sex, violence, both ends of the economic spectrum and racism were shown without comprimise by Holdt. When asked how he managed to snap such pictures he says it's very easy, once you've earned the trust of your depictees. Holdt, having spent close to 40 years hiking around America, is excellent at gaining the trust of complete strangers, sometimes through acts that the common man would regard as disgusting: a video, produced specificially for this exhibition, showed Holdt talking about him enduring sexual abuse, slave-like living and working conditions and extreme poverty in order to grab his shots.

Yet Holdt claims he has never met an inherently bad person: of all the bigots, racists, homo- and xenophobes not one of them has been born evil, if Holdt is to be trusted. This unconditional humanism seems a bit questionable to me, but Holdt seems to know what he's talking about, and after, more or less, aimlessly jaywalking through the exhibition for 1½ hour I was just about convinced of this controversial statement.

Holdt has also been active on the political scene advocating a quick and massive response to the growing gang wars that plague Copenhagen in this day. The problem is now on a relatively small-scale, but Holdt says he has seen the same development many places throughout the US in the 70s and 80s. He is also strongly against the sitting governments integration policy, saying the shutting multiculturalism out in this day and age is as futile as it is stupid. Ironically one of his best friends is Søren Espersen, MP from the DPP, the right-nationalist party of Denmark.

Holdts pictures are copyrighted, but a good one is here: http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/usa/pages/usa-00529.htm. There are countless others worth a peek: I've spent hours browsing his site.

If you swing by Humlebæk in any foreseeable future, be sure to swing by. If you know someone at Krogerup Højskole, swing by for a beer as well. Nothing helps digest art like a cold one from the fridge.

- Hans Henriksen