Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography

Where: Nordic Museum
When: (8/6/22 - 11/22/22)
*Note: The Nordic Museum is open from 10am-5pm; please bear this in mind when planning your Third Thursday)

The National Nordic Museum presents ​“Taking the High Ground: Tough Men and Tough Places in 19th Century Landscape Photography” with Dr. James Swensen. Several key photographers in the United States and Europe who emphasized their manly deeds as part of their work are shown in the Museum's current exhibition. "Taking the High Ground" explores the ways in which the photographs of and experiences in sublime landscapes from the rugged fjords of Norway to the bare-rock landscapes of the arid West perpetuated the notion of masculine identity. Click the link below the photo to read more...

"Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography" provides a new examination of Norwegian and American landscape photography in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

At the present time of devastating climate change and political conflicts about the environment and energy consumption, this exhibition considers a historical moment when once remote wildernesses were first surveyed, developed, and photographed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Drawing from the collections of Ron Perisho, the Picture Collection at the University of Bergen Library, and the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, the exhibition investigates how two countries responded to the tourism influx, infrastructure changes, exploitation of natural resources, and the resulting effects of mapping and exploration. Don't miss the Museum's September events including "Indigenous Corps of Discovery Presents Don't Go North!" -- a three-day community event offering a complementary programming that recasts the history of the American West and Northern Norway from the indigenous perspective, including free gallery tours and an evening musical celebration on Sept. 29.

Dr. James Swenson's  research interests include documentary photography, American photography in the 1930s and 1970s, and the art and photography of Utah and the American West. He is the author of "Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography" (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), and "In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954" (University of Utah Press, 2018).

Visit the Nordic Museum's event page to learn more!