Tuesday, January 02, 2018

Carl Stormer, 1890s photographer

Norway c. 1893 - I used Photoshop to round the
corners of Stormer's photo, making it look
even more contemporary
The Internet changes everything. Fredrik Carl Mülertz Størmer was...

(3 September 1874 – 13 August 1957) a Norwegian mathematician and physicist, known both for his work in number theory and for studying the movement of charged particles in the magnetosphere and the formation of aurorae.[2][3]

But thanks to the Internet he's now best known as Norway's First Paparazzi. Because...
Long before the professional paparazzi began to make life miserable for celebrities, Størmer was a pioneer in the rather dubious hobby of secret photography.
In the 1890’s, he walked around in Oslo – often along main street Karl Johan – with a hidden camera and took pictures of famous men and women.
Størmer called Henrik Ibsen “an excellent object”, Ivar Aasen was “old and frail” and a number of professors and other prominent persons were “favored objects” caught on film, in addition to a lot of artsy high society women.
The photos really are amazing because virtually all other portrait photography of the time was done in studios where people stood like humorless manikins. They don't look real. Stormer's people look real, including Ibsen.