Fons Hellebrekers took his first photographs at the age of fourteen with a borrowed Kodak box camera. Two years later he was expelled from a training college for the priesthood. He had a variety of jobs at first, one of them with the book and art dealer Langenhuijsen in The Hague. Hellebrekers felt drawn to the world of art, and the artists and writers he met in that milieu were to play an important role in his life.
In 1925 he and a partner opened De Sirkel gallery in The Hague. Although the venture lasted only two-and-a-half years, it led to many friendships. Among the artists Hellebrekers met during this period as an art dealer were A.D. Copier, Joep Nicolaas, Permeke, Josef Cantré and Erich Wichman. His writer-friends included Jan Campert, Victor van Vriesland and A. den Doolaard.
In 1928 he was one of the first Dutchmen to buy a Leica, with which he took pictures on a trip to the south of France with Den Doolaard.
In 1930 he decided to set up as a freelance photographer in The Hague. His first assignments came from the Erwin Wasey advertising agency and from architects and interior designers like Jan Wils, Cor Alons and W.H. Gispen. His work of this period is clearly influenced by New Photography. Besides his commercial photography, Hellebrekers portrayed artists and writers throughout his life. After the war he made reproductions of work by many of his artist-friends.
Fons Hellebrekers' archive in the Netherlands Photo Archives consists primarily of his prewar work and his postwar portrait photographs. He sold his reproductions of work by Sierk Schröder and Kees van Bohemen to the Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague in 1993.
