Photography and cultural heritage

Norway - a country in development as shown in photography between 1870-1910.

By Hanne Holm-Johnsen

Photography is a wonderful medium. It brings us close to a time that is gone. But not necessarily to the past as it was, but a past, as the involved want us to see it and the medium allows. The Norwegian people in the 19th century were very much aware of living in a historical period. They were building a nation. The photographers, the masters of the new massmedia, were very much involved.

A new political situation
Because of political circumstances at the end of the European War initiated by the French emperor Napoleons hegemonic ambitions, Norway was taken from Denmark, which it had been part of for about 400 years, and given to Sweden. The Treaty was signed on January 14th 1814. A huge country with a small population, Norway had never been an equal partner in the union.
For the Danish kings and ruling classes through the centuries, the vast Norwegian outback had natural resources that brought wealth. Education was kept to a minimum and talented young men had to go to Copenhagen to get their higher education. The privileged classes with positions in Norway thus were Danish or Norwegian men educated in Denmark. This is not to say that there was no positive cultural and economic development in Norway during all those years, but the country that could not move the European community to let them rule themselves, had very little of the institutions that are necessary for an independent country.
Through heavy activity in the spring of 1814 there was organized an assembly at Eidsvoll were a constitution was passed and independence was declared on May 17th. The Union with Sweden could not be avoided, but since the treaty said Norway should belong to the King and not the Kingdom of Sweden, the country got its own Prime Minister. The Minster of Foreign Affairs, though, was Swedish, and this was one of the questions that would break up the Union in the end. It lasted until 1905. But the building of a nation with all its political and cultural institutions - and myths - occupied the whole century and was particularly strong around the end of this period.

A new technique
Through all time people have had an urge to make images. The principle of concentrating light through a small hole in order to create reflection on the wall of a dark chamber (camera obscura) was known already to the Greek philosopher Aristotle 2300 years ago. The photographic camera was based on the camera obscura, described as early as the tenth century AD, and published as illustration in 1545. The problem though was to fix the image so that it would keep. In 1839 the techniques of the Frenchman J. L. M. Daguerre and the Englishman W. H. Fox Talbot were known to the world. The two techniques were different, but they could both give an image that would last.
It was not long after that the news arrived in Norway. In October of 1840 a Daguerreotype was exhibited in Bergen and at the beginning of 1841 an other was shown at an exhibition of paintings and drawings arranged by the Art Society in Christiania (now Oslo). Among the spectators was the publisher Hans Thøger Winther (1786-1851). He himself experimented with fixing an image. In 1842 he published his first photographs, but as lithograph reproductions, and three years later he published an extensive handbook explaining the direct positive process, the negative/positive process and a method for conversion of positives into negatives and vice versa. One could also buy cameras made of wood or cardboard, built after his instructions. So his work inspired a growing group of amateur photographers this early in Norway, and one can find his name in international literature today when the pioneers are spoken of.

Building a national identity
Norway was a rural society with a small population mainly living from agriculture and fishing. There were no really big cities and only a few industrial settlements in the beginning of the 19th century. But the generation of 1814 had big ambitions. Therefore the project of building a national identity was undertaken with great earnestness. The development of democracy and political parties, of a national bank, a capital with commercial activity, of improved education and a university was undertaken. So was strengthening the industry. To build roads and railways to improve communications through the land seemed of great importance, and later on, building hydropower plants were equally important. The models were found in other countries and fitted Norwegian circumstances, as one had done with the constitution.
The artistic community formed an important part of this project. Architects, authors, composers and scientists all joined in. So did the growing population of photographers. It is an interesting fact that the new technique developed side by side with the growing society. We can very much read what was considered important in this society by what motives the photographers made images of and how they used these images.
The material that have survived from this period show that they both tried to document society as it developed and helped give the society images to create and understand an identity. The images in this exhibition are chosen to show all these aspects. Most of all the emphasis is put on the connection between romantic esthetics and Norwegian identity - how we understand ourselves and probably how Norwegians are seen by others - even today.

The photographers and their projects.
One of the most important early participants in the field of photography was the Danish pharmacist Marcus Selmer (1818-1900). He came to Bergen in 1851 and established a portrait-studio were he made daguerreotypes and photographs in other techniques. He soon started on a big project: photographing people in local costumes and landscapes from different parts of the country. The images were offered to the popular illustrated press and tourists - both growing industries. Some of the images of people in costumes are photographed in a studio or with a backdrop, whilst others have been shot on his travels. They were often hand-colored. The images were sold in different formats and through bookstores. As one can see, his compositions are not revolutionary. They resemble earlier lithographs or engravings.
Early painting and engravings also inspired his landscapes. Norway was full of wild and rugged scenery so loved in the Romantic era. The most breathtaking places had been visited and sketched by artists living or educated in Germany some years earlier. They were hence brought home to the atelier and painted. A typical romantic landscape had wild untouched nature. Oceans, woods, mountains or waterfalls, often with Devin light coming from the sun or the moon, preferably through majestic clouds and contrasted with small figures contemplating their place in this world.
A preferred choice was picturing one or more figures with their back to the spectator looking onto the scenery. Another theme was the trace of bygone great culture as pictured in ruined castles or gothic churches. The geographic places and selection of viewpoint in these romantic images were adopted or influenced both Selmer and other photographers' choice of motif. We can even see traces of this in production of postcards today.

Knud Knudsen (1832-1915) probably learnt to photograph from Selmer whom he worked for for many years before he started his own studio in Bergen in 1864. He was the first to systematically photograph the whole of Norway: from Kristiansand, a city in the south, to the North Cape. He made all together 9000 images before 1898, when he retired and left his business to a relative. No doubt earlier artists and their choice of places to go also influenced him, but it is unnecessary to emphasize that he expanded the repertoire and that way also peoples knowledge of the country. With the photographic technique still in its infancy, Knudsen, like other photographers all over the world, had to travel with quite a lot of equipment. The silver iodide emulsions of the time were sensitive only to the blue rays of the spectrum and those that lay beyond. In the sky blue is predominant, and therefore skies were overexposed and cloudless when a sufficient time had been given to record the features of a landscape. Direct exposure to the sun was another problem. The skies would get a mottled appearance in the print. Knudsen solved the problem by either covering the remaining sky area with a paper mask or taking two exposures: one of the earthbound features and one of the skies. The last was exposed for a much shorter time and then the print was made from the two negatives.

The Swedish photographer Axel Lindahl (1832-1906) was engaged by the publisher Richard Andvord in 1882 to photograph Norway. During his time in Norway Lindahl traveled all through the country and completed an archive of about 3000 images, very much the same way Knudsen did. Several of his images are so much alike Knudsen's that it is logical to assume that he studied them before he started on his tour. Andvord published two series of pictures in 1892 and 1897, apart from an extensive use of the archive for illustrations and sale of mass-produced images for tourist-albums. But also these images were part of a desire to survey the country and present it to the public.

The brothers Thorvald Aron (1871-1896) and August Brunskow (1862-1906) worked as a team, as did Marie Høeg (1865-1949) and Bolette Berg (1871-?). The Brunskow brothers made quite a lot of images of the Norwegian landscape over a short time, probably between 1892-93.

The landscapes are often taken at the same places that other photographers made their images, but the composition seems to be more like the stereoscopic landscapes so popular around the same time: with emphasis on the foreground to get a clear illusion of space.

It is an interesting fact that quite a lot of women worked as photographers in Norway from the end of the 1880s and onward. There are several explanations for this. First of all the improved technique at this time was easier and fast to learn, it was not very expensive to establish a photographic business, and a law was passed in 1866 that allowed women to have a trade. The big surplus of unmarried women made it necessary to find more acceptable occupations. Not all could be teachers or servants, look after their old parents or be looked after by relatives.

An article from 1914 show that some also believed that women were more suited because of a special artistic understanding. Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg set up their studio Berg & Høeg in the small city of Horten in 1896 and worked there until 1903 when they moved to Christiania and started as publishers. They worked mainly with portraiture. Horten was one of the important navy-bases in Norway, with many likely customers traveling through. They also shot some landscapes and produced postcards, but it seems they did not travel as extensively as their male counterparts mentioned above. The landscapes that have survived are solely from the southern cost of Norway and the villages in this region. If their prospects are different, it is because children are often found playing in the streets or on the beaches. It seems they have not bothered telling them to go away, but have chosen to use them as elements in the picture-composition instead. And some are delightfully curious looking into the camera, not away. The images have no romantic meaning as defined earlier in the century. They are merely a realistic documentation of small villages and peaceful scenery in places that were popular to visit in the summer holidays.

Foreign photographers in the wake of the tourist industry.
The 19th century saw a growing group of a new type of traveler in Europe: the tourist. The upper classes had more free time, money and curiosity about different cultures than ever before. They came mainly from the powerful countries with colonies: Great Britain, France and Germany. There is no doubt that the growing group of foreigners visiting Norway gradually turned into an activity with many possibilities for industrious photographers. Therefor, in the wake of the tourists came the photographers. The Scottish photographer William Dobson Valentine (18? - 1907) came for the first time to Norway in 1890. He had inherited his father James Valentine's business together with his brother. According to the business protocol he made about 1000 images of Norway, some which were published in a separate album or sold through bookshops in different cities on the tourist route. They were all signed J. V. and are therefore not difficult to identify.
In spite of the fact that there was quite a lot of seemingly similar images of Norway, even more images were produced and found a market. In this situation the perhaps most secure method to ensure that your images were wanted was to go on a cruise. The German photographer Wilhelm Berges from Hamburg seems to have traveled the Norwegian coast all the way to the North Cape more than once. The landscapes were then bound in an album with name of the boat and the date written on the front, like the album from the Nordlandfahrt der "Augusta Victoria" of 1897, and sold to the passengers on the trip as a souvenir.
Travelling the Norwegian coasts to the North Cape or further by boat appears to have been a preferred way to journey for many of the foreign visitors. Increasing numbers were amateur photographers as well. They brought handier cameras and a bettered technique developed towards the end of the Century. In spite of the fact that their photographs in general are of low quality, in a poor state and with the lack of deliberate composition spontaneous images often have, they are both refreshing and informative.
An adventurous group of tourists, the British yacht owner S. R. Platt with friends, traveled the Norwegian coast in 1881. One of them was a photographer, and so the trip is known today, but not his name. The way his images look, he most certainly was an amateur, and we find here an early example of what was to come. Here is the beginning of the practice that hardly any traveler leave out today: documenting the trip. So are the images by the Frenchman Henri Vuillard doing. In 1893 the Norwegian government entered into a 4-year contract with the shipping company Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskap to provide for an express shipping service that had been recommended two years earlier. The rout was to go between Trondheim and Hammerfest in the summer and only to Tromsø in the winter. There were nine ports of call on the way. This should fast turn out to be a popular means of transport, also for tourists, and it has continued to be so even today. The S/S Raftsund, one of the companies' ships, was Vuillard's means of transportation in June 1896. His small photographs taken on the ship or on shore describe the everyday activity on board and around every port. Like so many others, his special interest was devoted to the communities in the north and the aborigines' population: the Lapps. This fits the picture when it comes to popular photography in general. It is important to have in mind that the amateur photographer, like today, had an affinity for the exotic. Therefore the multitudes of images of people in folk costume, traditional crafts, snow and ice and rugged landscape does not necessarily give us a correct picture of Norway at that time, but it shows what the traveler thought of as "high lights".

The Stereograph industry and Norway
Around 1850 a joint British-French effort developed a stereoscope that won great popularity, also in Norway. Two slightly dissimilar photographs, taken from viewpoints a few centimeters apart produce the stereoscopic effect. The illusion of depth appeared with the help of the binocular-viewing device. To get a scene that looked like a small piece of reality in three dimensions you had to create an image that was carefully planed or composed. If the image consisted of a foreground and background, and clear defined figures or objects, you would get a scene that can resemble the reassembled planes of a cardboard stage-set. Therefore the best stereographs are the images taken by photographers who had knowledge of classic composition in painting. And therefore they also are fascinating images shown alone.
The life of the stereo views was less than a century, roughly from 1850 to 1930, but in this period millions of people was entertained and enlightened by them. There was hardly a subject left out, from staged bible-scenes to pornography. Especially popular were all the images from strange and exotic countries. The person, who could not afford to travel or planned a trip, could go places in front of the fireplace at home. And there was not a location in Europe, nor the rest of the world, which was not covered by this pictorial survey, carried out either by local photographers or by travelers, going off on their own initiative or commissioned by one of the big distributors.
Since the industry grew to immense proportions and the cameras developed to take stereographs very fast were cheaper, lighter and less cumbersome to use, stereographs were taken by professional as well as amateur photographers and often preferred on trips. For the anonymous Norwegian amateur photographer travelling in his own country some time around 1900 Setesdalen was as exotic as a foreign country. But it also was a symbol of something else: the "unpolluted" Norwegian culture. It is logical that new impulses and modernity first reached the bigger cities on the coast of Norway. The remote valleys in the heart of Norway easier kept their traditional culture and way of life. Setesdalen was such a place, and artist had painted there since the middle of the century.

The Swedish photographer Axel Lindahl mentioned earlier also did stereo views when he photographed the Norwegian countryside for the publisher Richard Andvord. So did another Swede, Per Adolf Thorén (1830-1909). He settled in Christiania about 1865 and photographed different Norwegian locations. But he also photographed important events, like the unveiling of the statue of King Carl Johan in front of the castle in the capital on the September 7th 1875.
For the enormous international market Norway was an exotic place. In addition there were many Norwegian immigrants in North America that were interested in seeing what their old country looked like, therefore a great number of American stereograph publishers produced series about Norway. Underwood & Underwood and the Keystone View Company produced several series. Both companies belong to the revival period around the beginning of the 20th century. The brothers Elmer and Ben Underwood started their company in 1882 in Ottawa, Kansas, and lasted until they in 1912 sold all their stereo views to the in 1892 started Keystone View Company. Who photographed the images they mass-produced seems almost impossible to find out, but they are professional images with an often closer look than the earlier pictures. There is no doubt that the predominant motifs are of the strange places and different customs, but factories, modern cities and architecture and everyday life are also part of these presentations of Norway. Therefor, even though we know that popular photography tend to be conservative and idealizing, we believe it was possible to find images that both are good to look at and tell an accurate story about Norway - a small country in development about a hundred years ago.

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