Bror Bernild and Jörgen Roos
1946
Page from Karl Ross,1945, Kan vi være dette bekendt, (Can We Allow Ourselves This?), (Copenhagen: Westermann)

Book page
Internet - Original source ill-defined
(Alan Griffiths, 30 April 2025) Kan vi være dette bekendt? (Can We Live With This?) published in 1946 with text by Karl Roos and photographs by Bror Bernild and Jörgen Roos, is a landmark in Danish social documentary photobook history. Released in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the photobook is a searing visual critique of poverty and inequality in Danish society, raising urgent ethical questions about social responsibility during a time when the nation was grappling with reconstruction, democratic ideals, and welfare reform. Structured as a cohesive photo-text narrative, the book combines stark, empathetic black-and-white photographs with sharply worded commentary to confront readers with scenes of housing shortages, working-class hardship, child neglect, and the lingering effects of wartime deprivation. Rather than offering sentimental or aestheticized depictions, the photographers adopted a raw, realist style influenced by contemporary European and American documentary traditions, including the social conscience work of the Farm Security Administration.
 
The title—posed as a moral question—functions as an indictment of societal complacency, challenging postwar Denmark’s self-image as a just and egalitarian nation. The juxtaposition of images and text compels readers to acknowledge not only the visible suffering but their own complicity or indifference. Kan vi være dette bekendt? was influential in shaping both public discourse and the evolution of documentary practice in Denmark, prefiguring the visual language of later welfare-state critique in Scandinavian photography. Recognized for its enduring cultural and artistic significance, the book was selected for the 28 Danish Photographic Books exhibition (2006) and featured in The Photobook: A History Vol. II by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (p. 242), where it is praised for its emotional directness and political engagement. Produced in a single edition, it remains one of the rare and definitive examples of postwar photobooks in Northern Europe that used photography as an instrument of civic accountability and social reform.
 
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