Guillaume Berggren
Guillaume Berggren (born March 20, 1835 in Stockholm , Kingdom of Sweden , † 1920 in Constantinople , Ottoman Empire ) was a Swedish photographer .
Life
Berggren comes from a poor family with many children and was born as Per Vilhelm Berggren . He began an apprenticeship as a carpenter in 1850 and, after graduating in 1855, went on a journey as a journeyman . After a stay in Hamburg he went to Berlin . There he trained as a photographer. On his wanderings he went from 1861 via Dresden , Laibach and Bucharest to Odessa . In 1866 he traveled to Constantinople, where in 1870 he made his first names French and opened a photo studio called Lilla Sverige (Little Sweden) in the Pera district at 414 Grande Rue de Pera .
Berggren was very successful in the following years with his photographs of everyday scenes in Constantinople, of officials and public events such as the Russian-Ottoman War 1877–1878 or the opening of the Orient Express in 1883. Tourists and their motifs such as buildings, ruins and landscapes near Constantinople were at times a rich source of income.
In 1883 Berggren returned to Sweden for a short time. He brought his niece Hilda Ullin with him to Constantinople. After his death she became the manager of the studio. In the years that followed, Berggren became known for his photos of craftsmen, street vendors, dock workers and prostitutes. Visitors passing through such as King Oskar II of Sweden, Anders Zorn and his wife Emma or the Swedish traveler Sven Hedin to Asia let him accompany and portray them. Another field of activity was recording for the production of picture postcards and picture reports for Swedish magazines.
Berggren began to systematically record buildings in Constantinople at the beginning of the 20th century. Out of necessity, he had to sell the majority of the glass negatives in the First World War . The German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul now has the majority of the negatives in its photo library.
Web links
- Biography and sources
- Biography (en.)
- To the exhibition 2011 (sv.)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Berggren, Guillaume |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Berggren, Pehr Vilhelm (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 20, 1835 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stockholm , Kingdom of Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1920 |
| Place of death | Constantinople , Ottoman Empire |