Wermund Bendtsen (28 October 1917 – 2003) was a Danish professional photographer, filmmaker and photojournalist active in Odense from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Biography
Documentation of Bendtsen's early biography and career is scant. He was the second child, born 28 October 1917, of Dagmar Cecillie Bendtsen (born Larsen, 1881) and Steffen Anton Bendtsen, pastry chef (born 7 December 1883 in Allesø, Denmark), who married in 1913 had 5 children including Edvin, Wermund and 3 others.
Early career
An ink drawing from 1941 depicting an alchemist, signed by Bendtsen, indicates his artistic talent that he was applying already to a career in photograph The site arkivdk provides online access to 500 Danish national archives including the Odense City Museums, Odense City Museum, and the photographs by, and of, him held there sketch out the course of his life. The earliest are in an album of 6 very competent black and white prints by him recording the damage to buildings from British bombing in Vestergade 41 and Bülowsvej streets in
Odense
Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (behind Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2022, the city proper had a population of 180,863 while Odense Municipality had a population of 20 ...
in 1941 during German occupation in WWII, when it was then a town of over 100,00 Imagery from 1948 records his peacetime activities as a scout master. A 1950 newspaper portrait of him shows him as an affable man in his mid-thirties dressed in a white darkroom smock coat.
Cinematographer
In March 1953 Bendtsen was the cinematographer for the Odense film company Orion Film when it visited
The Funen Village
The Funen Village ( da, Den Fynske Landsby) is an open-air museum located in the neighborhood of Fruens Bøge in Odense, Denmark.
History
The Funen Village was founded as a public works project in 1942, during the German occupation of Denmark. ...
, Sejerskovvej, Odense, Denmark to make a documentary about the heritage village, an open-air museum preserved as it was in the time of
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.
Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...
. The director and producer were Tage Larsen and Svend Larsen and they were advised by the Funen village architect Eigil Hansen. Bendtsen was director of photography for Orion Film's half-hour documentary ''Fra ø til ø i Kattegat'' (From Island To Island In The Kattegat) of 1955, with screenplay by Christian Seeberg.
Recognition
Though Odense art gallery was hiring Bendtsen as early as 1953 for documentation of their artworks, in the 1950s regard in Denmark for photography as an independent art form was ambivalent.
Edward Steichen
Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.
Steichen was credited with tr ...
's exhibition "
The Family of Man
''The Family of Man'' was an ambitious exhibition of 503 photography, photographs from 68 countries curated by Edward Steichen, the director of the New York City Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) Department of Photography. According to Steichen, ...
" (the Danish title translates as 'We People') challenged this attitude when it was installed at the Charlottenborg in Copenhagen in 1957. There, on its world tour from the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York, it had 60,000 visitors in just a few months, and the exhibition became an influential success. It included several Swedish photographers: Caroline Hebbe and her husband Hans Hammarskiöld,
Lennart Nilsson
Lennart Nilsson (24 August 1922 – 28 January 2017) was a Swedish photographer noted for his photographs of human embryos and other medical subjects once considered unphotographable, and more generally for his extreme macro photography. He ...
, Hans Malmberg, Karl W. Gullers,
Pål Nils Nilsson
Inge Pål-Nils Nilsson (July 7, 1929 – May 25, 2002), was a Swedish photographer and filmmaker active from the 1950s to the 1990s. Early life
Pål-Nils Nilsson was the son of sculptor Robert Nilsson (1894–1984) and celebrated textile artist B ...
and Karl Sandels, but only one from Denmark; Wermund Bendtsen, while none were included from the other Nordic countries. Bendtsen's low-angle shot that Steichen selected shows a shirtless construction worker mopping his brow, and the same image, more tightly cropped, appears on the 1979 vinyl LP cover for ''Vi Længes Sikkert Mod Noget Andet'' ('We are longing for something else') by
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
Rudolf Nilsen
Rudolf William Nilsen (28 February 1901 – 23 March 1929) was a Norwegian poet and journalist.
Early life
He was born in the district of Vålerenga in Kristiania (present-day Oslo), on 28 February 1901, him at the launch of the new premises accompanied by theatre photographer Gunnar Graham (1915–2004) and, as an indication of Bendtsen's clientele of the period, they are joined by author, historian and Odense Museum Director Niels Oxenvad (1928–2014), Apollo Theatre director Tage Larsen (who was also founder of Orion Films in 1947) and Ethel Johansen, director of Ethel Johansen Advertising in nearby Nørregade.
In the 1960s Bendtsen's studio was producing a broad range of imagery including advertising photographs for Danish companies, including Star refrigerators in Marslev, and Wittenborg Machine Factory, manufacturer of
automat
An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drinks are served by vending machines. The world's first automat, Quisisana, opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895.
By country Germany
The first automat in the world was the Quisisana ...
s. For the Odense City council he produced architectural photography of interiors of newly constructed municipal offices, records of
land reclamation
Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamati ...
and town and street scenes for publicity. Other clients were the tourist organisation, the art gallery and theatre, and his pictures also appeared in the newspapers of the region.
Bendtsen was still photographing into his seventies, until 1997 when he passed his business on to colleagues, whereupon Wermund Bendtsen Photography ApS was founded on Thursday 11 December 1997 at Stenhuggervej 18 5230 Odense M, moving 3 years later to Østerbro 18, Odense, but ceasing its activity seven years later on 1 February 2005, during an industry-wide shift to digital imaging. During this latter period his name appears in credits for specialist
reprography
Reprography (a portmanteau of ''reproduction'' and ''photography'') is the reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means, such as photography or xerography. Reprography is commonly used in catalogs and archives, as well as in th ...
of artworks in significant art publications for museums including the Johannes Larsen Museet. He died in 2003.
Publications
* Bendtsen, W. (1957). ''Fotoinspiration og billedkomposition''. Skandivanisk bogforlag.
*Ørnholt, Hjalmar, author & Bendtsen, Wermund, photog. (1959) ''Det Sydfynske Øhav'' ('Hærvejen'). First edition. P. Haase & Son Publishers, København
*Paulsen, I.B., author & Bendtsen, W., photog. (1960) ''Det Sydfynske Øhav'' ('The Archipelago'). Text in Danish, English and German. 1st ed. P. Haase & Son Publishers, København
*Bendtsen, W., & ''Odense City Museums''. (1960).
*Ørnholt, H., & Bendtsen, W. (1961). ''Langs hærvejen''. Haase.
*Paulsen, I.B., author & Bendtsen, W., photog. (1961) Jyllands Vestkyst ('Jutland's West Coast'), 1st ed. P Haase & Son Publishers, København
*Bendtsen, W. (1962). ''Odense County and City Hospital.''
* Bendtsen, W., & Pedersen, EM (1963). ''The young bar: 78 recipes for non-alcoholic drinks, snacks, desserts, etc.''. Copenhagen.
*Bendtsen, W., & Kjersgaard, E. (1963). ''Fra Dannevirke til Dybbøl''. København: Haase.
*Bendtsen, W., Saabye, S., & Odense's museums. (1968). ''Odense's museums''.
*Andersen, I., Norbøll, K. W., Mikkelsen, K., & Bendtsen, W. (1969). ''Fysik og kemi for 1. og 2. realklasse: Tegn''. Kbh: P. Haase & Søn.
* Bendtsen, W., & Saabye, S. (1970). ''Odense City Museums''. Odense.
*''Danmarks Grafiske Museum: Wermund Bendtsen''. (1990). Odense: s.n..
Collections
Wermund Bendtsen's work is in the collections of:
* Museum Folkwang, Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen
* Clerveaux Castle, Luxembourg