Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis: the artistic legacy of Sophus Tromholt

Sophus Tromholt (1851 - 1896) a Danish-born, self-taught scientist, and school-teacher, left a unique legacy from his role in the First International Polar Year. He had set up an open-air studio to photograph the Auroras in the remote High Arctic settlement of Kautokeino, on the Norwegian/Finnish border, and there won the admiration of the Sami who posed for portraits. But his scientific hopes were dashed: "Every attempt I made to photograph the Aurora Borealis failed...in spite of using the most sensitive dry plates, and exposing them from four to seven minutes, I did not succeed in obtaining even the very faintest trace of a negative" . He admitted in his newspaper columns and subsequent book "Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis" that the accompanying illustrations were..."the photographic reproductions of my own drawings", made in his hut. These drawings were long overlooked after his early death, although his archive of Sami photographs achieved international and UNESCO acclaim. On her way to the Faroes eclipse in 2015, Christine Finn came across the albumen prints of the Aurora illustrations, protected together with the glass plates at the University of Bergen. Astonished by these drawings as works of fine art, she was given permission to work with them, and was commissioned by the Scottish gallery, Timespan, to have them remade as large-format photographs. They were exhibited for the first time there. This talk tells the story of Tromholt, drawing on the work of his biographers in Denmark, Dr Peter Stauning and Kira Moss, and Finn's project, which is travelling the course of the Aurora cycle. It acknowledges Tromholt's archive at the University of Bergen, Timespan/Creative Scotland. The evening will include an extract from Tromholt's written descriptions of the Auroras he witnessed, in a recording made for the Timespan show by the British actor, Michael Maloney.

Dr Christine Finn

(b Jersey, 1959) is an artist and creative archaeologist, who is also a freelance print and broadcast journalist (BBC radio, Sunday Times UK). She works across three investigative practices - reporting, excavation, and art in various media. She was a Reuter Journalist Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, where she also studied Archaeology and Anthropology, and wrote her doctorate on Yeats, Heaney and archaeology (Past Poetic, Duckworth). She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, with a left-field interest in retro technology (Artifacts: an archaeologist's year in Silicon Valley, MIT Press; essays at Edge.org), She has spoken about poetry to astronomers, and travelled to total eclipses in Sumatra, UK and the Faroe Islands. One of her artworks was installed during last year's eclipse in Oregon. Finn is also a Senior Research Associate at Flinders University, but is making her first visit to Australasia as an artist supported by the British Council & Arts Council England, and the Henry Moore Foundation.

Photo credit: Claire Chapman