Kjell Bloch Sandved

Kjell Bloch Sandved (* 1922 in Norway) is a Norwegian photographer and nonfiction author. His most famous work is the Butterfly Alphabet (Butterfly Alphabet ) in which photographs of the pattern representing all twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals from 0 to 9 on butterfly wings.

Life and work

Sandved emigrated in 1960 from Norway to the United States, and has since worked for the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC His photographic excursions took him to Brazil, Congo, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. In 1975, he then presented his finished alphabet in Smithsonian Magazine to the public. Since the "Butterfly Alphabet " he has made ​​the photographs for a number of other nature books, including books about insects, leaves but also music. Several of his works have been published in German.