Studio task 2 - research

Ellisif Wessel14. July 1866 - 28. November 1949

Workers’ rights activist, she was one of the founders of the workers union for the mining company A/S Sydvardanger, she is thought of as a pioneer within the Norwegian trade union movement.

She is known as the photographer of the real North in Norway. She moved up to Kirkenes during the famine years in Norway in the 1900's. She started engaging with activism during these years and did not stop. she photographed the real north to get attention from the south. She just documented it, she did not do anything fancy with it, she worked with real people and showed the crisis from the point of view of the natives. Ellisif is from eastern Gustal in Oppland but lived in Kirkenes all of her adult life after she got married at that. 

During her youth, she believed in teosofi and unitarianism. Teosofi is based on the physical world is based on a manifestation of spirits that is the source of all existence.  

She helped refugees from Russia in the early 1900's when the communist first tried to take over the tzar empire.  She was friends with several communists but was not part of any communist parties. She was a socialist was an active writer about workers right, the native population in Norway. Before she was allowed to write in the newspaper she took pictures of how life actually in the north. there was starvation and they were on the backburner in terms of rights.