Our collections
The collection contains well-known motifs from Norway and Bergen, private albums dating back to the 1860s, documentation from research archives and examples of early photographic techniques. The Picture Collection consists of individual images and photo collections of varying size from photographers, collectors and private donors – around 2 million images in total.
The Picture Collection houses a wide range of photographic materials and motifs, reflecting the development of photographic history seen from a local perspective, but with many national and international elements. For example, the Knud Knudsen collection provides valuable historical documentation of Bergen from the period 1860–1898, and his landscape photographs from Western Norway and Norway more broadly are of great importance. The Tromholt collection shows Sami life and traditions as they appeared in Finnmark in 1882–1883. Jørgen Grinde's collection from the Middle East is an important documentation of the early work of UNRWA in the 1950s.
A full overview of the photographic collections (external link) is available at marcus.uib.no.
The history of the collection
The Picture Collection has its origins in work on photography at the University Library from the early 1960s, then under librarian and photo-history pioneer Susanne Bonge. Since the Picture Collection was founded in 1967, the unit has gradually grown in size and importance. The Picture Collection has developed a cataloguing system and subject index for photography, has published important contributions to Norwegian photographic history, and holds some of the country's most important photographic collections. The Tromholt and Knudsen collections are on UNESCO's Norwegian Documentary Heritage list, and the Tromholt collection has also been added to the international documentary heritage list "Memory of the World".
Our work
The Picture Collection works continuously on digitizing, cataloguing and disseminating the photographic collections (external link), which are progressively made available at marcus.uib.no. Digitization is prioritized according to preservation and dissemination considerations and public requests. At the same time, work is carried out to preserve the analogue material. Photographic material requires very particular conditions to be preserved for posterity, and all original material is therefore kept in a closed climate-controlled store.