Introduction

From vagabonding to international
bestseller and multi-media event

Vagabond years

Arriving in America with only $40 for a short visit, a young Dane, Jacob Holdt ended up staying over five years, hitchhiking more than 100,000 miles throughout the USA.

He sold blood plasma twice weekly to be able to buy film. He lived in more than 400 homes – from the poorest migrant workers to America’s wealthiest families such as the Rockefellers. They not only gave him a hospitality and warmth, but their continuing friendship to this day.

He joined the Native American rebellion at Wounded Knee, followed criminals in the ghettos during robberies, snuck in to work in slave camps in the South, and infiltrated secret meetings of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the headquarters of the Republican presidential campaign.

While working with prisoners, he saw two of his friends murdered. By the time he returned to Denmark, 12 of his friends had been murdered (in the years since, so many of his friends have been murdered that he has completely lost count).

The (multi-media) show in Europe

Back in Denmark he put together the photos he had taken into a multimedia show named American Pictures. His show instantly became enormously popular and with the help of several black American friends, it was shown in 14 countries in 7 languages between 1976-2025. 

The profit was used for humanitarian aid in support of the struggle against apartheid by donating schools and farm machinery to the countries and liberation groups bordering South Africa.

The show in America

In 1978 the show moved to America, where Jacob Holdt has since presented it in more than 300 universities, city councils, churches, etc. The show has been updated constantly. 

In his latest version Holdt worked closely with leading educators, psychologists and workshop counselors throughout America and Europe in order to best incorporate universal themes of oppression. 

As a result the show is now the ideal thought-provoking “warm up” for national and international conventions on peace, ethnic conflict, human rights, sociology etc.

It has recently been digitized so that it can be streamed directly into classrooms.

Watch it here.