Background
Jacob Holdt was born on April 29, 1947 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was the son of the pastor at Grundtvig's Church in Copenhagen. In 1950, the family moved to Fåborg, a village where he spent most of his childhood.
2016
Holdt's slideshow at Allinge Library during the Folkemødet
Jacob Holdt
wife Vibeke, Lalou and Daniel
(In the early 1970s, Jacob Holdt left his native Denmark a...)
In the early 1970s, Jacob Holdt left his native Denmark and arrived in the U.S. with 40 dollars in his pocket. He meant to zip through the country on his way to South America, but he was so shocked and fascinated by what he saw here that he decided to stay a while. When his family was skeptical about the poverty he described in letters home, his father shipped over a cheap amateur camera, asking for proof, and Holdt began to create this portrait of America and its underclass. In the end, he spent five years as a vagabond, selling his blood twice a week and hitch-hiking over 100,000 miles. He befriended whoever offered him a ride, and a ride frequently became an offer to stay a few days. He never said no, and in the end visited more than 350 homes, where he photographed the people he lived with: poor families, millionaires, junkies, members of the Ku Klux Klan. His images echo the work of the WPA, and have inspired Lars Van Trier among others. More recently, Holdt, who was born 1947 in Copenhagen, has been working in third-world countries, documenting the lives of those in poverty there.
https://www.amazon.com/United-States-1970-1975-Jacob-Holdt/dp/3865213936/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Jacob+Holdt&qid=1580461294&sr=8-3
2007
(This 304 page book contains dozens of color and black and...)
This 304 page book contains dozens of color and black and white photos taken between 1971-1976 when Jacob Holdt travelled more than 100,000 miles across America living as a vagabond and capturing on film the people with whom he came into contact, including more than 350 families in 48 states, most of whom were poverty stricken black Americans.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Pictures-Personal-Journey-Underclass/dp/8798170201/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Jacob+Holdt&qid=1580461294&sr=8-1
Jacob Holdt was born on April 29, 1947 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was the son of the pastor at Grundtvig's Church in Copenhagen. In 1950, the family moved to Fåborg, a village where he spent most of his childhood.
After being thrown out of high school in 1965, Jacob Holdt attended Krogerup Folk High School, north of Copenhagen. Expelled from the Royal Palace Guard after eight months, he spent several years protesting the Vietnam War and conditions in the Third World.
In the spring of 1970, Jacob Holdt traveled to Canada to work on a farm. He planned to travel to South America to support the government of Salvador Allende after Allende was elected president of Chile in September 1970. Jacob Holdt never made it. In the United States, he was robbed. He stayed in the United States and spent four years working in civil rights issues.
Arriving with only $40, Jacob Holdt was shocked and fascinated by the social differences he encountered. He ended up staying in the USA more than five years, criss-crossing the country by hitchhiking more than 100,000 miles and taking thousands of photographs.
Jacob Holdt sometimes sold blood plasma twice a week to buy film. He stayed in more than 400 homes including those of poor migrant workers and America's wealthiest families, including the Rockefellers. He stayed with people who were often so poor they ate cat food and dirt and who lived in rat-infested shacks. Along the way, Jacob Holdt took more than 15,000 photographs with a cheap pocket camera.
His work captured the daily struggle of the American underclass and contrasts it with images of the life of America's elite. Upon returning to Denmark in 1976, Jacob Holdt began lecturing on social differences in the United States and published a book: American Pictures. He later presented his slideshow at over 300 college campuses across the United States and Canada.
American Pictures had a profound impact on the youth in Scandinavia and Germany, and the Communist bloc saw a chance to use his work against President Carter's human rights campaign. Jacob Holdt was approached by the KGB a few months after his slideshow became a success and he saw a chance with the help of the Soviet Union to penetrate the Marxist bureaucracy in Angola. Here it was his intention to spend the money earned from American Pictures in building a hospital in support of the anti-apartheid struggle.
However, when his book was published in 1977 the KGB revealed to him that it was their intention to use it in an all-out campaign against Carter to try to demonstrate that human rights were violated just as egregiously in America as in Russia. Only a month after its publication, Jacob Holdt therefore hired his lawyer, Søren B. Henriksen, to stop his own book all over the world. Except for Germany, Holland and Scandinavia, where they already had contracts with his Danish publisher, he managed to stop it, and did not release it again until the end of the Soviet Union.
As a result of losing most of his expected income from the book, Jacob Holdt could not finance a hospital, but only a nursing school built for the Namibian resistance group SWAPO in Kwanzu Zul in Angola with matching funds from the European Union. After the liberation of Zimbabwe in 1982 he also supported projects there. At the end of the cold war Jacob Holdt was briefly accused of having been a KGB-agent, but it was easy for his publisher, Dagbladet Information, to show that he had actually worked for the other side and had even flown President Carter’s human rights envoy over to approve his film manuscript intended for the American market.
Along with his continuing lectures Jacob Holdt has since 1991 worked as a volunteer for CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) in several third world countries. He has continued to document the lives of those in poverty while working for CARE.
His most recent projects have also focused on white supremacist hate groups. Jacob Holdt spent time living with leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and photographing their daily lives. He is sympathetic with the people (but not the political views) he encountered in these groups, pointing out that most grew up under marginal circumstances and often were victims of child abuse. Jacob Holdt emphasizes the similarities in background between white supremacists and poor minorities.
(This 304 page book contains dozens of color and black and...)
(In the early 1970s, Jacob Holdt left his native Denmark a...)
2007