Used Hardware intertwines two photographic series by Keld Helmer-Petersen and Martin Ransby, both depicting IBM’s former headquarters in Lundtofte, north of Copenhagen.
In the late 1970s, the internationally renowned photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen (1920–2013) photographed the newly constructed buildings – Designed by the Danish architect Jørgen Bo (1919–1999), who was also one of the architects involved in the design of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The buildings appear polished and white, set within a landscape of low hedges and neatly planted young trees. Several decades later, in early 2021, Martin Ransby encountered the same buildings during a period where they stood vacant, bearing clear traces of the wear of time; worn and fragile in appearance, and the young trees that had grown tall and unruly.
The book is centeret around the two series that together create a visual dialogue across time, while also pointing to the distinct perspectives and contexts in which they were made. Keld Helmer-Petersen enjoyed unrestricted access – working as an architectural photographer for Jørgen Bo – and thus had ample opportunity to move freely both inside and outside the buildings. Martin Ransby, by contrast, encountered the buildings from the back, where access was prohibited, navigating the site, often at its periphery, without drawing too much attention. Yet the meeting of these two positions also opens up the possibility for something entirely different to occur between the pages of the book, between the photographs and in the space between the two experiences.