Waldemar Eide

The Stavanger-based photographer Waldemar Eide (1886-1963) is considered one of Norway’s leading portrait photographers from the first half of the 1900s. His works, however, remain relatively unknown to the wider public. Stavanger Art Museum aims to change this situation through presenting an exhibition of his artistic photographs in combination with material that situates his practice in a wider context.

Waldemar Eide was one of the first photographers to see himself as a pictorial artist. He regularly exhibited his works in Norway and abroad and is often described as a photographer who was more known in Europe than at home. He participated in exhibitions and won several prizes for his photos. Eide also wrote regularly about art and photography for professional journals and newspapers and is reckoned to have been highly significant for amateur photographers in general and cultural life in Stavanger in particular.

Eide’s studio was a meeting place for Stavanger’s local inhabitants, visiting artists and notable people whom he portrayed. The composer Sergej Rakhmaninov, the historian Frederik Macody Lund and the opera singer Kaja Eide Norena were amongst the many Eide photographed. He is most well-known, however, for his photos of the Russian ballet dancer Vera Fokina, whom he portrayed in 1919 –pictorialist photographs with soft contours and painterly effects. The exhibition is produced by Stavanger Art Museum and is accompanied by a catalogue featuring articles by Lisabet Risa (historian, the National Archives of Norway, Stavanger), Hanne Holm-Johnsen (art historian, Preus Museum), Sigrid Lien (art historian, University of Bergen) and Vibece Salthe (art historian, Stavanger Art Museum).