#museumsfoto

A ‘born-digital’ photo is a picture taken with a digital camera, for example a cell-phone. We hope the public will share their pictures with us and help us build this new collection. As of today, Stavanger Museum has a collection of approximately 14,000 photos: these mainly show subject matter from Stavanger from the latter half of the 1800s and up to the 1960s. Among other things, there are glass plates and paper positives that we have been fortunate to receive from local photographers, both professionals and amateurs. These pictures constitute important historical source-material and are valuable as documentation of life in Stavanger.

Never before have we taken so many pictures

Photo technology has been in a state of constant revolution in recent years. Most people today only take digital photos, usually with a cell-phone. Simultaneously as technology has changed, we see that the way we use photos as visual media is changing, and that visual communication is becoming increasingly important. The way we take pictures, the motifs we choose and how we share them with others also change constantly.

In 2015, Norwegians took on average 1,365 photos, and each year we share millions of them via social media. Most of the images remain digital. It is no longer common to develop pictures, to print them on paper and keep them in family albums. Stavanger Museum therefore sees the importance of collecting digital pictures in order to preserve them for the future. The photos we take today become documentation of our era.

Would you like to contribute to our new collecting project?

To document life in contemporary Stavanger, we want you to send us pictures that tell about what Stavanger is for you. We want to document how the city centre and the neighbourhoods look today. We also want pictures of the various holidays and other celebrations in the city, from your trips, workplace and free-time activities. If you would like to share your pictures, you can upload them directly to our website, or send them by e-mail.  

If you have questions about the collecting project, please contact curator Trude Eriksen:

E-mail museumsfoto@museumstavanger.no or telephone (+47) 407 28 415.