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Trym Ivar Bergsmo
Trym Ivar Bergsmo is a Norwegian photographer based in Harstad, North Norway. He got his BA in photography at Brooks Institute of Photogragphy, Santa Barbara, California.
Bergsmo has worked in the arctic for more than 25 years documenting the lives of the people of the north, their landscape and culture. He has made several books and had exhibitions all across Europe.
Tim Parkin
Amateur Photographer who plays with big cameras and film when in between digital photographs.
I've been following Trym's work on Facebook for quite some time and it's nice to see work from such an iconic place as Lofoten but through the eyes of a 'local'. I hope you enjoy his photography as much as I do.
Can you tell me a little about your education, childhood passions, early exposure to photography etc?
I was a very visual child. In the evenings my mother came to give me a hug before I fell asleep, but I was in my dream/fantasy world and had no time for her cuddling. I wanted to go back to my adventures and journeys. But she had a small darkroom and this is where I got exposed to black and white, putting objects on the photo paper, exposing and then developing it. Very intriguing.
At the age of 16, I was given 20 rolls of Ektachrome 200 by a painter friend of the family. And the first time I looked at a developed colour slide film, a new world opened to me. Since then I have loved to photograph and that's 40 years ago this year. I got my education at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. It was a commercial school. But I was fortunate and had a chance to work at Friends of Photography in Carmel, where I met many great photographers and saw their work.
What are you most proud of in your photography?
Difficult to say. But I made a book about the Reindeer People in Norway, the Sami people. It was the most selling book in the region where they lived, in Finnmark for two years. I was told it made the Sami people proud about their own culture.