Biographies

Biographies

Sten Didrik Bellander (1921-2001)
A pupil at Sandels Illustrationsbyrå 1937. Took part in Nationalmuseum’s first exhibition of photos in 1944. Pupil of Arne Wahlberg 1940. 1943 assistant to Rolf Winquist at Ateljé Uggla. Went to New York in 1947 for further study and was Richard Avedon’s assistant for a period. Influenced by Andreas Feininger’s modernistic approach to motifs. Returned to Sweden as a commercial photographer at Ateljé Uggla. Became the owner of Ateljé Savoy in autumn 1948. In 1949 he took part in the exhibition ”Unga Fotografer”, the most debated photo event of the 1950s. Awarded the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet’s prestigious prize in 1954. A member of Tio fotografer. Solo exhibition at Moderna Museet in 2000.

Johan Wilhelm Bergström (1812-1881)
Sweden’s leading exponent of Daguerreotypes. Apprenticed to a glassblower. Successful career with own glazing business. His interest in engineering and science caused him to experiment with Daguerreotypes in 1842. Ordered Daguerreotype equipment from Paris, opened a studio and rapidly became the leading exponent of the Daguerreotype in Stockholm.

Hugo Beyer (1864-1925)
Pharmacist and amateur photographer. After working in a camera shop he established himself as a photographer in the 1910s and opened the Ateljé Beyer on Drottningatan in Stockholm. In parallel he ran a business in Halmstad. Was secretary of the Photographic Society for many years and a frequent contributor to the magazine Fotografisk Tidskrift.

Nils Björsell (1857-1897)
Apprenticed to several well known photographers including Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon) in Paris. He travelled extensively and took pictures in Moscow. He opened his own studio on Regeringsgatan in Stockholm in 1885.

Ernfrid Bogstedt (1908-1989)
Born in the parish of Björkvik in Södermanland. Accepted as a boy seaman on leaving school. Served as a sailor on a submarine at the Stockholm naval base. Trained as a photographer in 1928 at the naval photographic unit in Stockholm. Left the navy in 1937 and established himself as a portrait photographer on Södermalm in Stockholm. While working as a photographer he also studied oil painting, watercolour painting and sculpture.

Nils Bouveng
Active as a photographer around the turn of the century. Photographed the landscape and architecture of Sweden.

Carl Gustaf Vilhelm Carleman (1821-1911)
Studied painting in Düsseldorf, where he also learnt the wet collodion technique. Worked with the marine painter Marcus Larsson. Took over J. W. Bergström’s studio in Stockholm.

Jan Collsiöö (b. 1938)
Active at the photo agency Pressens Bild since 1959.

Gustav W:son Cronquist (1878-1967)
Born in Stockholm. Civil engineer. Graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 1900. Senior engineer at Hyllingeverken’s factories, public relations manager at Höganäs-Billesholm AB and head of department at Gumælius advertising agency. His consuming hobby was photography. In 1907 he produced the first colour photograph in Sweden, an autochrome now in the photographic collections of Moderna Museet. Lectured on photography and film. Chairman of the Photographic Society 1941-44.

Carl Curman (1833-1913)
BFamous as a doctor and has been called the ”renewer of the Swedish bathing tradition”. While studying at the Karolinska Institute (graduated in 1864) he attended the Academy of Art as a special pupil, training as a sculptor. In the 1870s and 1890s he produced the photographs which make him one of Sweden’s foremost photographers. As a photographer Curman represents a romantic nationalist ideal.

Lennart Durehed (b. 1950)
Attended the Photographic College in Gothenburg from 1967-1969 and worked as a photographer for a Gothenburg agency at the beginning of the 1970s. Assistant to Irving Penn in New York 1973-1976. Active at the photo gallery Camera Obscura in Stockholm 1977-1983. Own studio in Stockholm from 1984. Several joint exhibitions in New York, Stockholm and Denmark as well as solo exhibitions in Sweden.

Lennart Edling (b. 1933)
Employed by the agency Kamerabild. Member of the Swedish Association of Photographers.

Bruno Ehrs (b. 1953)
Produced the exhibition “Stockholm suite” with composer Tom Wolgers. Ehrs likes working against the light to create a mood in his simple motifs with facades, pillars of bridges and concrete fundaments. The focus is sharp. Most of the Stockholm pictures were taken early on Sunday mornings, before the city had woken up.

Lars Ekengren
Active during the 1950s and 1960s

Ferdinand Flodin (1863-1935)
One of the great Swedish ‘Pictorialists’. Around the turn of the century he ran one of Stockholm’s most popular portrait studios. He lectured on the history of photography at the Photographic Society. As a young man he studied in the USA. He wanted to become a painter but took a job with the famous Canadian photographer William Notman. He was a member of the editorial board of Nordisk Tidskrift för Fotografi and for many years acted as secretary of the Association of Swedish Photographers.

Erik G:son Friberg (1899-1987)
Prominent amateur photographer who won numerous competitions. Member of the Photographic Society. Also submitted landscape photographs to the competitions run by the Swedish Touring Club.

Victor Forsell
Painter and photographer, active during the 1880s.

Sven Gillsäter (1921-2001)
One of Sweden’s leading nature photographers. Also produced films and wrote books and articles on nature and the environment since the 1950s. He was a founder member of the agency Tiofoto and of the Association of Nature Photographers. He inherited his uncle’s photographic equipment at the age of 12 or 13 and this aroused an interest in photography. After three years as a commando soldier and an apprentice of Sven Hörnell who was a photographer in Lappland, he moved to Stockholm to work. He did a lot of work for the magazine Se and for the newspaper Expressen, in the early years mostly as a sports photographer. With his pictures of the peace celebrations in Stockholm he had his first scoop as a press photographer but it was as a nature photographer that he gained an international reputation.

Gösta Glase (1920-2001)

Henry B Goodwin (1878-1931)
Born in Munich. Studied linguistics in Leipzig in 1903 and there got to know the leading German portrait photographer Nicola Perscheid. Lecturer at Uppsala University 1905-1909. Goodwin introduced the term ”bildmässig” which was intended to distinguish the ”kamerabilden” (camera image) from the ”simple, common photograph”. ”Kamerabilden” was the name of Goodwin’s studio when, in 1915, he became a professional photographer. He had a solo exhibition in Stockholm in 1915. In 1921 he tried to establish himself as a photographer in New York. One of Sweden’s leading ‘Pictorialists’.

Gustaf Grahm (1901-1971)
Furrier. A member of the Photographic Society and one of the most active photographers in competitions. The alleys of the Old Town were one of his favourite motifs. His style was romantically nationalistic with a degree of the new objectivity’s more concrete approach to the motif.

K W Gullers (1916-1998)
One of Sweden’s best-known photographers – even internationally. Gullers was a pioneer of photo-journalism in Sweden. He published his material in magazines like Se, Vi, Folket I Bild and Vecko-Journalen as well as in international magazines such as Life, Illustrated and Picture Post. As chairman of the Association of Swedish Photographers from 1953-57 he worked to raise the status of photography and photographers. In Gullers’ pictures there is much of what we experience as typically Swedish. And no one else has published as many books with the title ”Sweden” and ”Swedish”. These photographs portray welfare-state Sweden and a faith in the future.

Oscar Halldin (1873-1948)
One of Sweden’s first press photographers with an adventurous streak. He undertook numerous voyages of discovery. In 1906 he was one of three non-Greek photographers at the jubilee Olympic Games in Athens. In the years around World War I Halldin became interested in ornithology and used his camera to document birds. In 1930 he was one of the founders of the Press Photographer’s Club.

Hans Hammarskiöld (b. 1925)
Took part in the exhibition Unga fotografer in 1949. This exhibition was a gesture of opposition towards the older generation of photographers. Hammarskiöld has worked in many spheres of photography: as a fashion photographer, photo-journalist and commercial photographer. His landscape photos convey a poetic tone. One of the dominant figures in post-war Swedish photography. Solo exhibition at Moderna Museet in 1993.

Emil Heilborn (b. 1900)
Born in St. Petersburg. Industrial and commercial photographer. Started out as an engineer and made use of his experience in his work as a photographer. He took to the imagery of the new objectivity and was possibly the photographer who worked most expressly with drastic perspectives and exciting diagonals. During the 1930s he worked principally with industrial and commercial photography. He contributed a suite of pictures to Moderna Museet’s exhibition ”Utopia and Reality” in 2000.

John Hertzberg (1871-1935)
Born in Norrköping. Studied in Vienna, Berlin and Paris. He established himself as a photographer in Stockholm in 1899. He was secretary and vice-chairman of the Association of Swedish Photographers. In 1916 he founded the photographic magazine Tidskrift för Fotografi. In 1907 he became lecturer in photography at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Hertzberg pioneered colour-photography in Sweden and as early as 1903 he published a colour photograph in Fotografisk Tidskrift. When the autochrome came Hertzberg was, together with Cronquist, the first person to try out the technique in Sweden.

Gustaf (Anderson) Heurlin (1862-1939)
Born in Virestad but worked as a photographer in Stockholm – notably as a press photographer – prior to the turn of the previous century.

Gösta Hübinette (1897-1980)
Painter and photographer. Life as a professional artist was far too risky and, after a commercial training, he was employed by Myrstedts Matthörna in Stockholm where he reached the rank of company accountant. During the 1930s he was one of the most energetic forces in the Photographic Society, taking part both in exhibitions and in competitions. He was one of the leading ‘Pictorialists’ of the 1920s.

Johannes Jaeger (1832-1908)
Jaeger is a legendary nineteenth-century photographer. Like many other early photographers, Jaeger combined photography with working as a painter. He studied at the Academy of Art in Berlin from 1848-51 prior to settling permanently in Stockholm where he had his own studio. He was made an official court photographer in 1865. Up until 1880 he maintained a dominant position. Jaeger is a true classicist and his pictures are objective and balanced. During the 1870s he started the series of ”Svenska Ögonblicks-Fotografier” (Instant Swedish Photographs). In 1890 he left Sweden and returned to Germany. He sold his studio but his successors, Albin Rooswall and Herrman Sylwander, retained the name Ateljé Jaeger and this meant that his name lived on in Sweden.

Tore Johnson (1928-1980)
Born in Paris where he took his most famous pictures during the 1950s. He went to school in Sweden and was a pupil of K. W. Gullers. Took part in the fabled exhibition Unga Fotografer in 1949. He was a stringer for the international photographic agency Magnum in Paris. From the mid 1950s Stockholm was his base. He was one of the founders of the agency Tio Fotografer in 1958. Photo-journalism in Vecko-Journalen, Se and especially in the magazine Vi.

Rune Jonsson (b. 1932)
A highly productive photographic author and teacher. From 1967-1970 he edited the Fotografiska Årsbok (Photographic Annual). Since 1969 he has taught photography at the Institute for Art Teachers in Stockholm and is highly influential in education.

Sune Jonsson (b. 1930)
Ethnologist, author, film-maker and photographer. In a succession of books he has portrayed Swedish farming and the farming population. But above all he has documented people and their surroundings in the northerly province of Västerbotten. He works as a field ethnologist at the Västerbotten County Museum. His portrayals of people and environments in Västerbotten and elsewhere in Sweden have made him one of the most popular and important photographers in post-war Sweden.

Sven Järlås (1913-1970)
Järlås was a noted profile during the year in which the new objectivity appeared. In 1929 he was a pupil of Ferdinand Flodin. The following year he was employed as a photographer by the magazine publishers Åhlén & Åkerlund. The photo studio produced pictures for advertisements as well as photo journalism for the company’s numerous magazines. He also took pictures for the magazines Vecko-Journalen and Se and produced a book on old age, Ålderdom (1949), together with the author Ivar Lo-Johansson. Järlås was also a theatrical photographer and during the after-war years he did work both for the Swedish National Theatre and for the Stockholm Opera. During the 1960s he worked for various magazines.

Caroline von Knorring (1841-1925)
Born in Dalarna. One of the one hundred registered photographers in Stockholm in the 1860s. Fifteen of these were women but at least three of the women numbered among the élite: Berta Valerius, Rosalie Sjöman and Caroline von Knorring. Her father’s business activities went so badly that Caroline had to make her own living. Photography was an acceptable profession for a daughter of the nobility. She moved from Gothenburg to Stockholm and opened a studio on Regeringsgatan. She produced stereoscopic pictures.

Gustaf Larsson (1906-1983)
Born in the province of Östergötland. Landscape photographer. Belonged to the romantic nationalist school. After succeeding in various competitions as an amateur he became a professional photographer.

Lars Larsson (1858-1932)
Started as a photographer in Orsa in 1876. He practised as a photographer in Clay City in Kansas, USA. He came to Stockholm in 1890. He became an official court photographer in 1892 and had his studio on Humlegårdsgatan. He was a good teacher and he had numerous students. He stopped working as a photographer in 1914 and he later devoted himself exclusively to the property business.

Axel Lindahl (1841-1907)
Active in Uddevalla at the end of the 1860s. Moved to Gothenburg and established himself as a portrait photographer. From 1881 he lived in Södertälje. He won prizes in the early competitions organized by the Swedish Touring Club. He photographed the Norwegian landscape and travelled widely in Sweden. Produced panoramas of Stockholm viewed from the heights of Södermalm.

Allan Ljungberg (1895-1964)
Member of Stockholm’s Camera Club which was founded in 1946 by a mixture of professional photographers and amateur enthusiasts. He ran a block-making workshop. He used simple lighting to portray nude models in the home.

Calldick Lundblad (b. 1917)
Taught photography at Frösundaskolan, where he also worked on developing an improved photographic training in Sweden. Studied at Konstfack in Stockholm. Worked variously at Ateljé Wahlberg and with Herrman Sylwander at Ateljé Jaeger. Solo exhibition in 2000 in Solna.

Carl Jacob Malmberg (1824-1895)
Born in Finland. Learnt photography in St. Petersburg, where he first worked as a goldsmith. Settled in Stockholm in 1859. He was acquainted with all the photographic techniques of the pioneering years and in the 1860s he introduced a new method photo-lithographic technique for magazine repro.

Peddy Moberg (1891-1961)
Born in Stockholm. As a youngster he worked as a circus artist, lasso-thrower and step dancer. Started taking photographs in the 1920s. Became a member of the Press Photographers’ Club in 1934. He frequently arranged his motifs to portray situations, groups and individual portraits. At the beginning of the 1970s his archive of negatives was transferred to Pressens Bild.

Severin Nilson (1846-1918)
Born in the province of Halland. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and in Paris from 1873-74. He was a painter but in the summer of 1875 he started to take photographs at home in Halland He also photographed the countryside in Södermanland and round Stockholm. He was a member of the Photographic Society. For Artur Hazelius, the founder of the Skansen open-air museum, he took photographs of Halland.

Pål-Nils Nilsson (b. 1929)
Worked for the Swedish Touring Club for many years and has helped in publishing the Pictures of the Year. Often takes photographs of beautiful motifs in the north of Sweden but has also produced large numbers of photographs of crafts and of artists as well as picture of animals and of nature. One of the founders of the agency Tio Fotografer.

Bertil Norberg (1888-1959)
Freelance photographer who worked for newspapers and magazines including Hvar 8 Dag, Hemmets Veckotidning och Vecko-Journalen. Frequently engaged by Harald Althin who ran the agency Pressens Bild. Member of the Press Photographer’s Club from 1932. He took part in their first exhibition in 1934. In 1939 he was elected onto the executive committee. In the thirties he was given the honorary title of court photographer. After his death his archive of negatives was deposited in the photo archive of the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Lennart Olson (b. 1925)
Industrial and architectural photographer as well as a photo-journalist. Internationally famous for his pictures of roads and bridges. In 1953 he took part in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as a representative of post-war European photography. Edvard Steichen, who built up MOMA’s photographic department, greatly admired Olson’s work and when the museum’s permanent photographic department was opened in 1960, Olson’s bridges were given a prominent position. In 1969 his bridge suite appeared on a set of stamps. Solo exhibition at Moderna Museet in 1989.

Lennart af Petersens (b. 1913)
Born in Kristianstad. He was in the middle of his studies when he appeared before the public in 1935. The Swedish Touring Club became interested in him after he had won one of their competitions and had been published in the photo annual Årets bilder. Nature and architecture were to be his fields of interest. He moved to Stockholm as an assistant to Arne Wahlberg. He photographed objects for Nordiska museet during the early years of the war. In 1942 he joined the Stockholm City Museum, remaining there for 35 years and portraying Stockholm in a state of transition. In 1939 he took part in the exhibition ”Det nya ögat – Fotografien 100 år” (The new eye – one hundred years of photography) at Liljevalchs in Stockholm. He has published numerous pictures in magazines and books. Solo exhibition at the Stockholm City Museum in 1978 and at Moderna Museet in 1983.

Eugen Riddarstolpe
Active as a photographer in Stockholm at the turn of the previous century.

Anna Riwkin-Brick (1908-1970)
Born in Russia. Came to Sweden in 1914. Was a pupil of the photographer Moses Benkow in 1927. Riwkin wanted to be a ballet dancer, but instead maintained contact with the ballet through photography. She opened her own studio in 1928. Portrayed the writers and artists of the period. During the 1930s she started doing photo-journalism which, for example, resulted in an account of the lives of the Sami people as well as books on Greece, Hawai and Korea as well as a succesion of children’s books. With the noted author Ivar Lo-Johansson she produced a book about Gypsy life, Zigenarväg.

Karl Sandels (1906-1986)
Born in Stockholm. Press photographer with a prominent position in Swedish photography. Representative of the new objectivity and one of the first photographers in Sweden to use geometrical shapes: circles and diagonals appear frequently in his pictures. He joined the newspaper Stockholms Dagblad in 1926. In 1934 he left the paper and started Sandels Illustrationsbyrå. He was one of the founders of the Press Photographers’ Club in 1930. From 1942-1960 he was the director of the Association of Swedish Photographers.

Ture Sellman (1888-1969)
Architect and amateur photographer. He designed several fine buildings in Stockholm. Made public appearances as a critic and lecturer on photography. A key member of the Photographic Society and of the magazine Nordisk Tidskrift för Fotografi well into the 1940s. Originally a ‘Pictorialist’ he later represented the purism of the new objectivity that developed towards the end of the 1920s. In 1931 he started Sellmanfilm which produced colour film. He died in 1969, forgotten and without means.

Axel Sjöberg (1865-1936)
Active in Malmö. He won second prize in the Swedish Touring Club’s first competition in 1933 for his characteristic and poetic images of the flat landscape of Skåne. He also won second prize in the next two competitions organized by the Swedish Touring Club.

Gunnar Smoliansky (b. 1933)
Influential photographer with intimate portrayals of his own environment. Took part in Moderna Museet’s 1978 group exhibition ”Genom Svenska Ögon” (Through Swedish Eyes) and with his insightful images he aroused the interest of a wide public. He also complemented Swedish photography’s strong documentary tradition with a more subjective and personal approach.

Karl Edvard Stenqvist (1855-1901)
Amateur photographer in the 1880s and 1890s. He was an early and respected member of the Photographic Society. Originally wanted to be an artist but his father persuaded him to start life as a customs officer. He rose up in the hierarchy but continued to mix with artists, particularly those living on Södermalm. He became a passionate amateur photographer and documented Södermalm in Stockholm.

Bertil Stilling (b 1924)
Press photographer on the newspaper Expressen.

John Stjernström (1893-1965)
One of the first photographers to be employed by the Swedish daily press. At the age of twenty he joined the newspaper Dagens Nyheter and worked there until about 1918. He then started Ateljé Stjernström, later to become Pressfotobyrån. Trained with the court photographer Herrman Sylwander at Ateljé Jaeger. He was a member of the Press Photographers’ Club and, from 1916, of the Association of Swedish Photographers as well as of the exclusive Photo Club which had 20 members. He ran a photographic shop on Karlavägen between 1941 and 1961 when he retired.

Sune Sundahl (b 1921)
Born in Stockholm. Architectural photographer. Attended photographic college but was soon considered over-qualified. Worked as a pupil to Arne Wahlberg and in due course joined the staff. At the end of the 1940s he had his own firm with some ten employees. Constantly engaged by Ralph Erskine to document the architect´s new buildings.

Arne Wahlberg (1905-1987)
Commercial and object photographer. The principal advocate of the new objectivity in Sweden. At an early age he was successful in competitions run by Svenska Dagbladet and Vecko-Journalen. Wahlberg was one of the first people in Sweden to create a new understanding of portrait photography and of commercial photography by making use of the diagonals, by incisive close-ups and, not least, by advanced lighting which meant that the reproduction of textiles, metals and glass surfaces was vastly superior to the murkiness that had previously reigned in this sphere. In 1939 he was one of the organizers of the exhibition ”Det nya ögat – Fotografien 100 år” (The New Eye – One hundred Years of Photography) held at Liljevalchs Konsthall with Helmer Bäckström and others. With his pictures of glass from Kosta he created a new epoch. For many years he worked for the Swedish Handicrafts Association. He also worked at Ateljé Jaeger (Herrman Sylvander) after studying in Dresden. He opened his own studio in 1929 where he produced commercial photographs and portraits.

Gunnar Wallin (b. 1936)
Born in Solna, he worked in the printing industry and was successful in numerous major photo competitions.

Rolf Wertheimer (b. 1930)
Active as an amateur photographer since the 1950s with Stockholm’s buildings and street life as his motifs.

Rolf Winquist (1910-1968)
Born in Gothenburg. Commercial and fashion photographer but best known as a portrait photographer. He studied photography at the Craft Association’s school. He travelled the seven seas as a photographer on cruise ships. He became principal photographer at Ateljé Uggla in Stockholm 1939, remaining there until his death. During the 1940s and 1950s he was Sweden’s most internationally famous photographer along side K. W. Gullers. His pupils included such well-known names as S. D. Bellander, Hans Hammarskiöld and Rune Hassner.

Valentin Wolfenstein (1844-1909)
Wolfenstein was skilled at producing ghost pictures which were popular in the 1860s. Two exposures were made, one on each half of the plate and the model changed positions between exposures. These pictures were not averse to some acting to heighten the effect. Wolfenstein may have been the first person in Sweden to work successfully as a photographer in the theatre before there was electric light on stage. In 1894 he took pictures on stage at the opera hsing magnesium flares. The flares were place in the auditorium and in the wings In 1890 Wolfenstein purchased Johannes Jaeger’s studio but retained the original name.

Nils Örke (1901-1978)
Born in Stockholm. Press photographer on the newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen. One of the first Swedish photographers to cross to Denmark just prior to the end of World War II.