The Helmer Bäckström Photography Collection

The Helmer Bäckström Photography Collection was purchased by the Swedish government in 1965 with funding from the Kungafonden foundation. Helmer Bäckström (1891-1964) was a scholar, collector, photographic historian and amateur photographer. He was an active member of the Fotografiska Föreningen photography association, and was appointed professor of photography at the Royal Institute of Technology in 1948. His collection was based on his avid interest in technology and the practical circumstances of early photography. It consists of some 13,000 items and has an interesting international part that includes William Henry Fox Talbot’s Four Shelves of Books (1844) and Oscar Gustave Rejlander’s Two Paths of Life (1857), but its strength lies in the Swedish portfolio. The early-20th century pictorialists are well-represented here, with works by Ferdinand Flodin, Henry B. Goodwin, John Hertzberg, Gösta Hübinette and Ture Sellman, to name but a few. In connection with the exhibition Bäckströms Bilder! (1980), the Museum published a book about the collection and Bäckström’s career.