Jacob Holdt

His mammoth work, American Pictures, gained international fame in 1977 for its effective photographic revelations about the hardships of America's lower classes.

Expelled from the Royal Palace Guard after eight months, Holdt spent several years protesting the Vietnam War and conditions in the Third World.

He stayed in the United States and spent four years working in civil rights issues[4] Arriving with only $40, Holdt was shocked and fascinated by the social differences he encountered.

[6][7] American Pictures had a profound impact on the youth in Scandinavia and Germany, and the Communist bloc saw a chance to use his work against President Carter's human rights campaign.

However, when his book was published in 1977 the KGB revealed to him that it was their intention to use it in an all-out campaign against Carter to try to demonstrate that human rights were violated just as egregiously in America as in Russia.

As a result of losing most of his expected income from the book, Holdt could not finance a hospital, but only a nursing school built for the Namibian resistance group SWAPO in Kwanzu Zul in Angola with matching funds from the European Union.

At the end of the cold war he was briefly accused of having been a KGB-agent, but it was easy for his publisher, Dagbladet Information, to show that he had actually worked for the other side and had even flown President Carter’s human rights envoy over to approve his film manuscript intended for the American market.

Holdt is sympathetic with the people (but not the political views) he encountered in these groups, pointing out that most grew up under marginal circumstances and often were victims of child abuse.