“To uidentifiserte barn på en sti” (two unidentified children on a path), ca. 1910, place and photographer unknown, via Nasjonalbiblioteket/National Library of Norway.
Tag: Norway
The Sunday porch: Norway
Employees of a hotel, Fagernes, Norway, August 12, 1910, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.
I thought it was worth showing even a corner of this really pretty pink porch.
This autochrome is one of about 72,000 that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker who was committed to the ideal of universal peace and believed that “knowledge of foreign cultures encourages respect and peaceful relations between nations.”* He was also acutely aware that the 20th century was going to bring rapid material change to the world.
Accordingly, from 1909 to 1931, Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to 50 countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.’”† The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.
*Collections Albert Kahn website. Also, the above photo (A 288) is © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.
†words of Albert Kahn, 1912.
Norway
Farmhouse with sod roof, western Norway, ca. 1890-1910, via Fylkesarkivet i Sogn go Fjordane Commons on flickr.
The stone foundation, steps, and terracing are beautiful. Also note the ladder-type device that the man on the right is using to pick fruit. Click on the image for a larger view.
Ytre Eikås, Norway
Six sisters from Ytre Eikås, Jølster Commune, Norway, ca. 1930 – ca. 1935, by Olai Fauske, via Fylkesarkivet (County Archives) i Sogn go Fjordane Commons on flickr.
Of course it’s about their flowered dresses, aprons, and blouse. For a much closer look, click here and then on the flickr page image.
The sisters are Anne, Johanna, Synneve, Inga, Ragna, and Kristina. In 1936, Kristina emigrated to the U.S. (The two girls in front are unidentified.)
The photographer, Olai Fauske, worked all around the Sunnfijord district, which included Jølster. He sold his photos and postcards not only locally, but to people who had emigrated from the area to the U.S. and then wrote back to him requesting pictures of home.
His childhood friend Alfred, for instance, longed to see Erviki in all its summer glory: “When June comes I believe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to try and get a picture of Erviki, when all the hills are green and the waterfall quite big. I liked that the best. . .,” he wrote in a letter to Fauske in 1909.
— notes on flickr album of Fauske’s photos
Fauske’s photo archive is now part of the County Archives of Sogn go Fjordane.
Among flowers
Two men and the photographer’s son, Anton, blandt blomar (among flowers), ca. 1910, by Paul Stang, via Fylkesarkivet (County Archives) i Sogn go Fjordane (Norway) Commons on flickr.
enclos*ure 