Copenhagen in black & white
Copenhagen in black & white
Copenhagen in black & white
The Museum of Copenhagen’s new exhibition COPENHAGEN IN BLACK AND WHITE can be experienced from 27 February to 16 August 2026. Here the Copenhagen photographer Julie Rønnow’s (1934-) powerful and aesthetically beautiful black-and-white images can be experienced alongside colourful collage installations created by visual artist Julie Boserup (1976-). Visitors are invited to enter a world that unites two women, two generations and two artforms to tell the story of Copenhagen as it once was.
A Copenhagen in Decline
From the 1960s to 2004 Julie Rønnow took literally thousands of photographs of Copenhagen. Today her archive has over 4,000 analogue photographs documenting the Danish capital, its inhabitants, and their history. Going through the vast archive three motifs stood out as themes for the exhibition: backyard, concrete and harbour, represented through 84 carefully curated images from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Rønnow recorded over three decades of Copenhagen’s decline, stagnation and redevelopment, a period when the population of the city shrank and the derelict state of many flats and backyards led to slum clearances. New homes were built, primarily in blocks of concrete council flats. During the same period industries started to disappear from Copenhagen, and with them the jobs that had existed in the harbour areas.
Turning the Lens from the Private Sphere to the Streets
Rønnow started photographing after the birth of her daughter in 1962. She was given a camera as a gift, which she took out on her first walks with her baby in a pram. She started by photographing her daughter, but then she looked up – raising her camera to capture the city that formed the backdrop to their many walks. Julie Rønnow had a natural flair for photography. She read up on techniques, but her photographic eye and sense for composition were instinctive.
Photographer Julie Rønnow
Julie Rønnow (1934-) was a familiar face in Copenhagen’s architectural circles, studied art history, and was on the staff of Charlottenborg Kunsthal for some years before dedicating herself to photography.
Rønnow has been awarded several grants from the Danish Arts Council and has exhibited her works in solo exhibitions and group shows. Her photographs also feature in books on Copenhagen. For 12 years she was the Museum of Copenhagen’s regular freelance photographer.
Rønnow’s photographic subject has always been Copenhagen. Here she was close to key contemporary events such as demonstrations, compulsory slum clearances and the occupation of buildings by squatters. She also captured everyday life of the city on the streets, as well as in playgrounds, backyards and outside concrete blocks of flats.
The children of Copenhagen did – and do – have a special place in Rønnow’s work, and often appear in her photographs. Her camera captured children playing in the derelict backyards of Copenhagen, as well as the brutal concrete world of new high-rise housing. Rønnow’s indignation at the conditions children in Copenhagen had to endure can be clearly felt in the exhibition – as can her admiration for their creativity and playfulness against the odds.
“I saw pictures everywhere. Like this one. It was a backyard I just came across where three kids were climbing somewhere that was probably forbidden. So I said: If you stand there, I’ll take a great picture of you.”
Julie Rønnow, May 2025
Artist Julie Boserup
Julie Boserup (1976-) graduated from Chelsea College of Arts in London in 2002. Her works have since been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally.
In COPENHAGEN IN BLACK AND WHITE Boserup takes Rønnow’s photographs as her starting point in creating spatial installations that play with the gaze, architectural lines and the archive. Rønnow’s photographs are fragmented and reassembled in new ways, turning the architecture and surfaces of the images into structural elements. Visitors are invited experience the works up close, walk through them, and experience the way Boserup’s compositions create small archives of Copenhagen’s old backyards, modernist concrete buildings, and its harbour as a place where nature and the city meet.
“Rønnow’s pictures of Copenhagen are iconic. She has captured its backyards and the life between buildings. It feels like a privilege to see them – like being invited on a long walk through the city and through time. For me it is a gift to be allowed to work with her photographs – time travel that makes it possible to discover surfaces and details of the city anew. By enlarging the photographs and using them in spatial collage installations I want to draw attention to the sensory dimension of shifting surfaces and details we often don’t notice in our everyday lives. I want to open up for a more tactile experience of the buildings in the city.”
About the exhibition
The exhibition runs from 27 February to 16 August 2026.
It is curated by historian Trine Halle and art historian Regitze Lindø Westergaard from the Museum of Copenhagen. COPENHAGEN IN BLACK AND WHITE has been created in dialogue with the now 91-year-old photographer Julie Rønnow.
Entry to the exhibition is included in tickets to the Museum of Copenhagen: Adults 110 DKK, children free of charge.
Free entry for all visitors on Wednesdays.
The exhibition has been generously supported by the following foundations:
The New Carlsberg Foundation
The Opstrup Foundation
The Jorck Foundation
The Knud Højgaard Foundation
The L. F. Foght Foundation
