København, Fra solnedgang til daggry by Alantherock: A Letter in 18 Photographs

København, Fra solnedgang til daggry is a photography print by Alan Pedersen that gathers eighteen photographs of Copenhagen onto one sheet, all taken between sunset and daybreak. It began as a letter. Alan wrote to his home city, admitted he could fill volumes about it, and chose photographs instead.

København, Fra solnedgang til daggry is a photography art print by Alan Pedersen, who works as Alantherock. It sets eighteen of his long exposure photographs of Copenhagen, gathered over several years, in a grid of three by six. It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, signed, and offered in two sizes and four background colours.

Laid out like a letter

The print is arranged the way a letter is: addressed at the top and signed at the foot.

In the upper left corner, written by hand across the sky of the first photograph, is a single word, København. It is the only word written on the sheet. In the lower right corner, on the last photograph, sits Alan Pedersen's signature. Between the two, the eighteen photographs run in rows of three and are read the way a page is read, left to right and down.

That shape is no accident of layout. When the print was first introduced on the NOKUKO blog in 2020, as A love letter to Copenhagen, the text beside it was a letter, and the product still carries it. It opens Et brev til København, a letter to Copenhagen, and it closes With love, Alan. The photographs are the body of that letter, set between its greeting and its signature.

This is the Danish edition, and the difference is that one word. The same photographs are also sold as Copenhagen, From sunset to sunrise, where the corner reads Copenhagen. The product note for this one is brief: it is the Danish edition, therefore København. A letter is addressed in the language of the one who receives it, and this edition addresses the city by the name its own people use.

Written between sunset and daybreak

None of the eighteen photographs was taken in the middle of the day. The sun itself appears only three times, all in the top row, and in each it sits right on the horizon: beside a sea bath at the end of a long wooden pier, over a low skyline of spires, above a line of dark rooftops. Whether each sun is setting or rising the pictures do not say, and the title allows for both. Fra solnedgang til daggry means from sunset to daybreak.

Everywhere below that first row the sun has gone. The skies turn deep blue and then close to black, and the city lights itself: lamps along the harbour, lit windows stacked above the water, coloured light around a round building by the water, a cobbled square with its bicycles parked for the night. In the middle of the sheet two photographs catch cherry trees in full blossom in pink twilight, the one note of season in the whole letter.

Alan's letter names what these hours give the city: another side of it. It is Copenhagen between the last light of one day and the first of the next, the hours a resident knows and a visitor mostly sleeps through.

He has built a city out of photographs once before. Tiles of Lisboa by Alantherock gathers Lisbon's Azulejos, found one at a time, into a single grid. København is the home version: not one kind of thing collected in a city he visited, but the city he lives in, collected over years.

Four backgrounds, one set of photographs

The four editions differ only in the colour of the lines between the photographs and around them: Black, White, Rose or Dark Oak. The eighteen pictures are the same in all four.

Black sits closest to the night skies that fill most of the sheet, so the grid steps back and the city lights come forward. White does the opposite. Its lines are brighter than any of the photographs, so each one reads as its own window. Rose is a pale pink that softens the whole sheet and answers the cherry blossom in the middle row. Dark Oak is a deep, warm brown, closer to a wooden frame, and it sits most easily with the three low suns at the top.

Every edition comes in 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm, printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g and signed by Alan Pedersen. For every print sold, a tree is planted.

A letter says who it is for before it says anything else. This one says København, in the city's own spelling, then spends eighteen photographs on the hours between one day and the next before Alan signs his name.

Hung at home, it keeps both ends of the letter in view at once: the greeting in one corner, the signature in the other, and the city in between.

About København, Fra solnedgang til daggry

What paper is København, Fra solnedgang til daggry printed on?
It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, chosen for quality and colour vibrancy, and each print bears Alan Pedersen's signature. For every print sold, a tree is planted.

What sizes does København, Fra solnedgang til daggry come in?
Two portrait sizes, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm. All four background colours are offered in both sizes, and the eighteen photographs sit in the same grid of three across and six down in each.

What is the difference between the editions of København, Fra solnedgang til daggry?
The four editions share the same eighteen photographs and differ only in the background colour of the grid: Black, White, Rose or Dark Oak. This is the Danish edition, with København written in the upper left corner. An English edition, Copenhagen, From sunset to sunrise, carries the same photographs with Copenhagen in that corner.

Is København, Fra solnedgang til daggry a limited edition, and does it come with a certificate?
No to both. It is an open edition print and is not one of the eight limited editions NOKUKO holds in a separate collection, and no certificate of authenticity is issued, because certificates accompany original paintings rather than prints. Each print is signed by Alan Pedersen and ships free worldwide on orders over €120.