Krass Clement
Byen bag regnen
- PhotographerKrass Clement
JOACHIM LADEFOGED The grand old man in danish photography. This was my "photography bible” when I started out as a young photographer.
In English it is called “The city behind the rain” Black and white images that gives a glimpse of the city behind the rain, moody and beautiful documentary photography. I could have choose to tell about so many other books he has made, but this one is something special for me. He is a master photographer and story teller, one that will be remembered for ever in danish photography.
The City Behind the Rain
In Byen bag Regnen (“The City Behind the Rain”), published in 1987, Danish photographer Krass Clement turns his lens on Copenhagen, capturing the city in moments of quiet reflection and subtle melancholy. Shot mostly between 1983 and 1987, these black-and-white photographs reveal a city often overlooked: damp streets, shadowed corners, reflections in puddles, and the lives of its unnoticed inhabitants.
Clement’s work is not about glamour or spectacle. Instead, he finds poetry in the everyday - the solitary figure on a rain-slicked sidewalk, the half-obscured face glimpsed through a café window. The rain, literal and metaphorical, softens and veils the city, suggesting both distance and intimacy, shielding yet revealing the rhythms of urban life. His use of natural light, often subdued or diffused by the overcast skies, heightens this sense of quiet observation.
The book’s design mirrors its vision: minimal text, careful sequencing, and high-quality prints invite the viewer to linger, to read the city through mood and detail rather than explanation. Clement’s empathetic gaze makes Byen bag Regnen more than a photographic record - it is a meditation on urban existence, memory, and the invisible threads that shape daily life.
Even decades later, the book stands as a landmark in Danish photography, celebrated for its timeless atmosphere and its tender attention to the lives often left in shadow. Through Clement’s eyes, Copenhagen emerges not just as a city of streets and buildings, but as a place of quiet, human resonance - a city always just beyond the rain.
