Photographer Knud Knudsen

A Norwegian photographer pioneer 1832-1915
By Morten Heiselberg

Knud Knudsen was born 03.01.1832 in the small village Odda, in the picturesque Hardanger fjord in western Norway, and he became one of the leading Norwegian landscape photographers in the 19th century. He was from a family who had run a village shop in Odda for generations. In young age he was sent to Bergen to work as a “boutique apprentice” and to learn the trade.

Very soon his interest turned toward fruit growing and basket making. During the winter months he collected apple seeds and planted them in the spring. In the outskirts of Bergen he had his own little garden centre where he grew apple trees and experimented on different apple sorts. Soon he started to trade apple trees to the whole west-coast of Norway. A scholarship brought him to Germany to study fruit growing and farming methods.

Knudsen must have been inspired by different daguerreotypistes who came to Bergen. It is very likely that he assisted the Bergen photographer Marcus Selmer before he went to Germany. The time spent in Germany broadened his horizon within fruit growing and photography. Knudsen had with him his own camera that he used on his travels in Germany, and the earliest pictures in the collection is from that time. Germany was by then very advanced within camera technology and photography. Germany was also a popular place for many Norwegian painters. There they had many of their exhibitions and they achieved great appreciation. This must have inspired the young Knudsen that soon acquisitioned the new technology within photography.

Back in Bergen he opened his own portrait studio in Strandgaten in November 1864 and he made a name for himself. He started his photography career when the collodion process had made its entry and the albumin paper became industrial made. Now the photographer could mass produce pictures and make it affordable for the common man to go the photographer. He made success with his portraits and town prospects, but his curiosity and eagerness to travel would soon bring him far outside the borders of Bergen. His photographer career was soon focused towards the tourist industry. As a good pedlar he knew where the tourist would travel and what they wanted pictures of. He followed many of the big tourist routs in Norway and documented hotels and landmarks in the summer month, and during the winter he printed the pictures. He produced single prints and whole albums that could be bought by visitors or sold for marketing. His journeys were often repeated, with an interval of a few years, and that gives a unique insight to how towns and villages changed through time.

Hardanger, the area where Knudsen grew up, was always important for him. He often went back and helped the farmers with fruit growing and advices. He documented this work thoroughly and his documentary style photo series with farmers working is among the earliest done in Norway and also worldwide.

His travel business brought him across Norway from the south and up to Finmark in the north. He took portraits of famous people like the violinist Ole Bull and on the other end of the scale he portrayed the Sami people in the north. His work should become an inspiration to other photographers like Axel Lindahl who would follow in Knud Knudsen’s steps, and in many ways copy his travelling pattern and subjects.

Knudsen was very fascinated by the new communication and infrastructure that were built in his time. Today it might be strange to see all his photos of roads and road stretches that were being built in Norway at that time. But for him it must have been a fascination and pride of what the engineers could achieve and how the country was being connected at the time.
Often he posed the coachman and his horse wagon in the picture to give it more genuineness. He must also have found it important to document his own way of working. Quite often one finds his darkroom tent standing on the side of the road, onboard a boat or up under a glacier. Maybe it was of his own interest or just a way to show how he worked and the often difficult working situations he was in. In retrospect it has become a curiosity and an interesting exploration to find his darkroom tent when going through his photo collection.

Knudsen achieved his own artistic view and many of his pictures are done very aesthetic. He must have been inspired by contemporary painters and many of the ”snap shoots” must have been carefully composed to achieve the right romantic expression. Some of those pictures are also signed “subject for painters”, and have probably been intended sold to artists for their art form.

Even after a long career and thousands of prints, very little is known about Knud Knudsen himself. There are just a couple of portraits of him. His photographic career ended around 1900, and he died fifteen years later in 1915.

Knud Knudsen’s picture collection has given us important insight to the nation’s development and has been important for the development of the early Norwegian photo consciousness, and has given us pictures of a bygone time.

His large picture collection is to bee found at Bergen University Library Picture Collection

For more information: http://www.uib.no/ub/spesial/en

Sources:
Det Norske Bildet (The Norwegian picture). Authors: Solveig Greve, Aasne Digranes, Oddlaug Reiakvam. Publisher: Groendahl 1988
Fotograf Knud Knudsen. Bilder fra en nylig oppdaget samling (Photographer Knud Knudsen, Pictures from a newly discovered collection). Author:Neil Morgenstern. Publisher. University of Bergen 1993