Culture Scapes Archives - Jens Christian Top

Clergymen and christian philosophers

by jenschristiantop.com 4th June 2025 in Architecture, Art, Culture Scapes, History, The church0 commentstags: Copenhagen

Statues of clergymen and christian philosophers/poets around The Marble Church, Copenhagen in the spring of 2025.

René Fievé – en kunstner på tværs

by jenschristiantop.com 13th April 2019 in Culture Scapes1 comments

“René Fievé – en kunstner på tværs” (René Fievé – an artist across) was published April 6th 2019 in Janusbygningen in Tistrup, Denmark. It´s a book I have written about the art and life of my old friend Danish graphic artist and painter René Fievé (1947-2010). The publisher is HRYMFAXE, and the book is for sale from JANUS – Vestjyllands Kunstmuseum, Tistrup, Denmark. Telephone +45 75 29 98 25.

Dutch people

by jenschristiantop.com 17th January 2017 in Culture Scapes0 comments

In April 1972 I used my MC Rokkor 135 mm, 1:3.5 to capture this image with dutch people in Muntplein, Amsterdam. In those days Johan Cruyff played football at the local football club Ajax Amsterdam.

In the USSR

by jenschristiantop.com 21st December 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

In the summer 1971 I joined a group travel to Moscow and Leningrad – now Sct. Petersburg. The sidewalks of both cities were often full of pedestrians. This slide is taken a late afternoon in Alexander Nevsky Prospect, Leningrad. The slope leads to an underpass below Sadovaya Street, and the people in the picture are citizens of the USSR.

Grandma in Frederiksberg

by jenschristiantop.com 13th December 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

Some years ago I found this 3 inch high picture in one of my grandma´s photo albums. The text was: Julie Jørgensen, November 1913. Usually she had written the location. Maybe she even did not know it herself? In November 1913 she was in training as a nurse at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen – then a new hospital for all the population of Denmark. I wondered where the picture was taken. If it was in Copenhagen, I found the atmosphere to be Strandvejen, Hellerup. It was not – so I thought, that it could be hard to find out, and that it would take too much time to solve the problem. So I gave up. Yesterday i came across the picture again, and I asked my intuition about the location. I saw an atmosphere of Gl. Kongevej, Frederiksberg. What about going through Gl. Kongevej by help of Google Street View? I did – and bingo! What a triumph! The building in the background is still existing at the corner of Gammel Kongevej and H.C. Ørsteds Vej. The signs are not the same, and the windows have become dark, but the building is just the same.

Householders

by jenschristiantop.com 7th December 2016 in Architecture, Culture Scapes, Humor0 comments

Two strong and naked men are holding the corner of a tenement house in Fredericia, Denmark. The scene is from 1997, and the building was erected in 1905.

Colonnade

by jenschristiantop.com 2nd December 2016 in Architecture, Culture Scapes0 comments

As an alternative and opposition to a local plan from 1988 for a new national football stadium in Copenhagen, where the main idea was to turn the stadium 90 degrees, three guys – Palle Bondrup, Albin P. Nielsen and myself – created and proposed a model for a new stadium, that was not turned the 90 degrees. The reason for turning the stadium was, that the boulevard Øster Allé was too close to the stadium. We thought, that it might be possible to build a tribune with spectator seats above Øster Allé. The only way to prove that it could be done, was to create a model – in this case a scale 1:200 model. The Polaroid photo shows how the alternative plan creates a tunnel and colonnade at Øster Allé. Our main reason not to turn the stadium was, that a 90 degree turn of the stadium would come too close to Lægeforeningens Boliger – a protected residential construction from 1854 – and shade the buildings and the outdoor areas from the sun. Our alternative was of course not accepted. In 1992 a stadium – turned 90 degrees – was inaugurated with a football match between the newly crowned European champions, Denmark and the reigning world […]

The Wall

by jenschristiantop.com 15th November 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

The Berlin Wall behind Reichstag Building, West Berlin 1978.

A break

by jenschristiantop.com 7th November 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

During a break in preparations for a short fiction film “Roland Tempel og hushjælpen” I shot this picture with the director of photography´s Polaroid camera on a balcony October 1983. From left Kris Kolodziejski (director of photography), Eric Kress (co-camera assistant) and Ole John Andersen (second prop man). The film was recorded in a house owned by Copenhagen Port Authority at Forbindelsesvej in the freeport.

Chewing gum pictures

by jenschristiantop.com 31st October 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

In my childhood in the nineteen fifties there was enclosed a picture, when you bought a plate of chewing gum. Mostly they depicted movie actors and singers. We had a game with the pictures – two, three or four boys lined up in front of a wall – the one, who threw a picture, so it landed closest to the wall, took them all.

Corn harvest

by jenschristiantop.com 19th October 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

When the sun had set the other day corn fields were harvested around my home. It reminded me of the horror movie from my childhood “The day of the Triffids”. As far as I remember, the only weapon against the Triffids turned out in the end of the movie to be salty water.

Drinking glasses

by jenschristiantop.com 22nd September 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

Drinking glasses in a wash bowl.

A look into a pot

by jenschristiantop.com 20th September 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

That´s what I saw, when a bag of blackcurrants thawed in a pot on the stove.

Marble

by jenschristiantop.com 30th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

I photographed this block of marble at a quarry in Borba, Portugal in 1985. I had a slide film in my tiny Minox camera.

Leg position

by jenschristiantop.com 26th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

The other day I went to the port of Esbjerg, where a lot of people exhibited their works in containers on the occasion of Esbjerg Festival. This day a certain leg angle was very popular.

Banana music

by jenschristiantop.com 24th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

Bananas on shelves in a Netto supermarket, Sædding, Esbjerg, Denmark – like notes in a musical score.

3D

by jenschristiantop.com 20th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

In 1994 I took this selfportrait of Hanne and myself. At that time we enjoyed three dimensional TV transmissions from the winter olympic games in Lillehammer, Norway.

Strandgade

by jenschristiantop.com 18th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

Early in 1978 I exposed a slide of the houses in Strandgade, Christianhavn, Copenhagen before the erection of the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Portrait

by jenschristiantop.com 16th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

In 1981 I photographed Islandic actor Arni Petur Gudjonsson in Copenhagen with a Polaroid SX 70 camera. When I was about to press the release button, he approached the camera.

Statue of Liberty

by jenschristiantop.com 14th August 2016 in Culture Scapes0 comments

A quarter scale – but complete copy of the Statue of Liberty in New York was donated to the city of Paris by the Parisian community in America to mark the centennial of the French Revolution. The statue was inaugurated July 4, 1889, and it was placed on Île aux Cygnes in River Seine. In order to meet the Statue of Liberty in Paris I took the metro to Javel/André Citroën. After visiting the statue I walked along Allée des Cygnes to Pont de Bir-Hakeim. This was in the year 2000, when I photographed in the cemeteries of Paris.