People Of The Sápmi - Northern Norway

ATTENTION: P l e a s e n o t e t h e l i n k t o s i m i l a r m a t e r i a l f u r t h e r d o w n !
In 1882 the Danish researcher and teacher Sophus Tromholt travelled to Northern Norway in order to investigate and photograph the phenomenon of Polar Lights. In between his work he took a keen interest in taking pictures of the native inhabitants of the Sápmi area, formerly known as Lapland. The result is now a remarkable collection housed by the University of Bergen, Norway.
In more recent days, Per Ivar Somby - a Norwegian of Tromsø (and of Sami origin) - creates colored versions of Tromholt's photographs, employing a skilful and disciplined technique.
These color versions cannot replace or push aside Tromholt's original black and white photographs. Yet, it is stunning how a little color energizes these pictures to jump at us across a gap of nearly 140 years. In the Kautokeino area, where most of these pictures were taken, the color images enjoy tremendous popularity, largely due to Tromholt himself taking care to note down the names of everybody he took a portrait of, going against the grain of the times to view these people as primitive nomads. Thus the present day Sami can often identify their relatives from bygone days.
Somby at times takes the liberty to crop the original images, presenting us with many close facial portraits that immediately strike us as very modern. These images reveal an amazing array of characters with composure, dignity, resilience. Men, women and even the children seem to be embedded in the wealth of experience that their lives at the frontier of the uninhabitable generates.
The Tromholt Collection has been included in UNESCO's Memory Of The World list.
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On my blog you can find some more info on this presentation, including some links to the original black & white photography by Sophus Tromholt:
http://wroosch.blogspot.com/2018/04/people-of-sapmi.html
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The creator of the colored versions of these images is Per Ivar Somby. Check out his YouTube channel for interesting material and demonstrations of his masterful colorizing technique:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZerFO17Dw7j2ukXAw4NIGw
Per Ivar gives this fascinating comment on the images here:
"My colourisation work you are all looking at here. Many of the faces you see here, are my ancestors, most of them are either great-grandparents of me, or my great-great-grandparents. Others of them are cousins or second cousins to my great grandparents. It's a personal document, these colourisations of mine. I also published them in my book in 2019!"

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