Marie Høeg’s worldmaking photography: a photo essay

Existence

With a casual grin and crossed legs, Marie Høeg appears to be quite comfortable in her own body as she sits on top of a pile of rocks in this staged studio photograph (Figure 1). Her shortly cropped hair, masculine clothing, and confident pose clearly signal that Høeg was not a conventional Victorian woman. Born in Norway in 1866, Marie Høeg was an outspoken activist, successful businessperson, and talented photographer (Moksnes, 2009). With her long-term romantic partner, Bolette Berg, Høeg owned the photography studio where these photographs were taken, a studio that they gave the gender-neutral name of Berg & Høeg.

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Figure 1.

‘Marie Høeg Sits on a Pile of Rocks in Traditional Men’s Attire.’ Available at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/5999n3588. Courtesy of the Preus Museum.

The photograph in Figure 1 is one of 440 glass negatives found in the 1980s on a farm once owned by Høeg and Berg. In stark contrast with the collection’s landscapes and earnest portraits of clients, 31 of these negatives show Høeg and her friends having fun and posing in various outfits, often in gender-transgressive styles. The Preus Museum, located in Horten, Norway, now holds Høeg’s photographs and has digitized this set of 31 negatives, which they have made available online.

This set of images is also accessible via the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA), an online archive of transgender-related historical materials freely available at www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net. As the Director (Rawson) and Digital Archivist (Tantum) of the DTA, we decided to include Berg & Høeg’s images in our database because they fall within our broad collecting scope of documenting ‘non-normative gender practices’ (‘Policies’). Since we have not found any evidence that she regularly presented or identified as male, we would not suggest that Høeg should be understood as a transgender person. ¹ As Figure 1 suggests, Høeg’s gender expression appears to be as independent as her thinking – Høeg was comfortable transgressing conventions of Victorian femininity through her clothing, hairstyle, and body language. Although this photo essay is included in a Themed Issue on trans visual culture, we want to be very clear that we are not arguing that Høeg should be reclaimed as a trans historical figure. Instead, our interest here is in introducing readers to her work and thinking through concerns of visibility, privacy, and self-representation, and how to approach traces of non-normative gender expression in historical context.

Throughout this photo essay, we will provide brief introductions to a handful of photographs depicting Marie Høeg in gender transgressive scenes. We have included 6 images out of the 31 that are available on the DTA. ² As Nina Lager Vestberg (2013) reminds us in ‘Ordering, Searching, Finding’:

By virtue of being photographic collections, the very things of which they are made up are always already indexical references to other, pre-existing objects-in-the-world. In addition to being an archival object in its own right, every photograph is in this respect also a mini-archive within the archive. (p. 476)

In this sense, it is important to acknowledge that these photographs are radically decontextualized traces of Høeg’s complex and influential life, offering only the most perfunctory glimpse into a few playful moments in a photography studio.

Høeg’s life has been studied in some detail in two Norwegian publications (Marie Høeg: Kvinnesaksaktivist, organisator og fotograf, 1996; Stuksrud, 2009), although it is unfortunate that these publications have not been translated into English. Perhaps in part because of the limited availability of information on her in English, Høeg does not appear to be widely known outside of Scandinavia. In fact, the first time these photographs were exhibited outside of Scandinavia was not until 2014 at the ONE Archives in the United States (ONE Archives, 2014). Although these photographs only offer a small contribution to our understanding of Høeg’s life, they are quite significant in documenting the existence of a person who playfully transgressed gender norms at the turn of the century.

Self-representation

In this diptych portrait, Høeg’s contrasting expressions create a striking duality between the two sides of the image (Figure 2). On the left, a scowling Høeg holds a mirror face-down in her lap as she faces the image on the right. On the right, she glances sidelong into the same mirror as she smiles warmly. This portrait has at least four layers of self-representation – the two contrasting figures of Høeg, the mirror reflection in the portrait on the right, and the photograph itself.

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Figure 2.

‘A Diptych Portrait of Marie Høeg.’ Available at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/nv935302r. Courtesy of the Preus Museum.

For gender non-conforming subjects, seeing oneself clearly – in mirrors or photographs, for example – can be a lifesaving tool used to gauge and assess how others see you and, in some cases, to determine whether it is possible to pass in public as a particular gender. While we have no indication that Høeg was trying to pass as a man, she certainly would be attuned to the public reception of her non-traditional gender expression. In this context, we might interpret the portrait on the left as a disapproving public gaze that looks scornfully at the Høeg on the right who smiles as she sees her own reflection. Or, perhaps the diptych is meant to represent her dual (or triple) personalities that are in tension as she attempts to see herself.

Posing in her own studio for photographs that are likely to have been taken by her partner Bolette Berg, Marie Høeg had privileged access to a form and degree of self-representation that would have been quite unusual at the time. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people who transgressed gender and sexual norms were commonly subjected to the pathologizing gaze of medical photography, which contemporary transgender artists are still continuing to grapple with (Steinbock, 2014: 544). Carter et al. (2014) point out in their introduction to a special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly that, by the end of the 20th century, ‘trans and genderqueer photographers (e.g., Loren Cameron and Catherine Opie) were actively constructing an archive of affirming images of themselves and their communities’ (p. 470). Again, although there is no evidence that we should consider Høeg to be ‘transgender’ in the contemporary sense of that term, we can chart a trajectory from Høeg’s photographic self-representation at the onset of the 20th century through self-identified transgender photographers at the end of the 20th century in that they share a common commitment to developing affirming and positive images of gender transgression.

Community

In addition to photographs of Høeg by herself, many of the recovered photographs also include other people (and, in a few instances, a dog). In Figure 3, Høeg poses with another person, both of whom appear to be crossdressed, to impersonate a dapper heterosexual couple. Even with a visible mustache and closely shaved head, the person on the right in Figure 3 calls attention to Høeg’s masculinity by providing a feminine counterpart who shyly smiles and gently grasps Høeg’s stiff arm. Both subjects are impeccably dressed and elegantly posed, making it clear that they take this moment seriously. In a similar vein, in Figure 4, Høeg poses in masculine attire alongside three people whom we infer are women, whose femininity contrasts Høeg’s masculinity. As in Figure 3, the subjects in Figure 4 are transgressing gender norms together since drinking and playing cards would not have been seen as appropriately feminine behavior at the time.

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Figure 3.

‘Marie Høeg and an Unknown Individual Crossdressed.’ Available at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/zg64tm12r. Courtesy of the Preus Museum.

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Figure 4.

‘Marie Høeg and Three Others Drinking and Playing Cards.’ Available at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/5999n355f. Courtesy of the Preus Museum.

In his 2016 article, ‘Breaking the Waves: Tuning into Queer History with FRANK’s Voluspå’, Mathias Danbolt argues that these photographs were ‘not taken in the context of art’ (p. 144). Instead, he explains, ‘the specific contexts of these photos are unknown, but when seen together they seem to give a glimpse into the alternative ways that Høeg, her partner, and their friends lived together and played with the camera’s world-producing potentialities’ (p. 145). The world that they produced in photographs such as Figures 3 and 4 is one where gender is more permeable, both for individuals who are crossdressed and for a group of women who are partaking in the male-coded activities of drinking and playing cards. ³ The world they produced also appears to be an exclusively white world, which is perhaps unsurprising in turn-of-the-century Norway. Yet it serves as a critical reminder that Høeg’s ability to explore and document non-normative gender expression was dependent upon other ways that she and her friends had privilege; even these minimal photographic traces of historical gender transgressions stand in stark contrast to the resounding absence of those who were less privileged and had no opportunity to document their lives.

While we do not know the extent to which these subjects carried this private gender play into public, there is a clear connection between the world that this community was producing in the photographs and the world Høeg was actively trying to shape with her activism. Even though she and Berg lived in the conservative town of Horten, Norway, Høeg founded multiple political groups, such as the Horten branch of the National Association for Women’s Right to Vote, the Horten Women’s Council, and the Social Discussion Association (Moksnes, 2009). Berg and Høeg opened up their photography studio for these meetings, inviting women through word of mouth and paid messenger boys to reduce the risk of detection. In this light, the photographs of Høeg with her community appear less like titillating private gender play and more like worldmaking exercises in line with their political efforts.

Visibility

In this pair of photographs, Marie Høeg playfully poses in oversized clothing. In Figure 5, she faces the camera with her hands on her hips and her face scrunched into a playful smirk. In Figure 6, she faces away from the camera with her arms folded across her chest and her head looking down, creating a more sullen scene. Both photographs share the same flowery backdrop with an ornate floor molding, which, given its broken and uneven appearance, suggests that it would not have been captured in the professional photographs they would take of others. Danbolt (2016: 144) helpfully explains the significance of the conventionally staged background when he writes:

Taken in front of the same painted backgrounds with flowery nature scenes and rococo architectural props as the conventional portraits, the person looking into the camera in these images do [sic] not confirm to the conventions of photographic behavior or modes of visibility of her time.

The tension between the background and the subject is particularly evident in these two photographs, given Høeg’s clothing, expression, and poses. The overtly staged and picturesque background is in stark contrast to the barefooted, highly casual Høeg who demands to be seen in one image and refuses to be seen in the other.

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Figure 5.

‘Marie Høeg Proudly Wears a Sweater and Baggy Pants.’ Available at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/44558d49x. Courtesy of the Preus Museum.

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Figure 6.

‘Marie Høeg Wearing a Sweater and Baggy Pants.’ Available at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/dv13zt38c. Courtesy of the Preus Museum.

Like many items that we include in the Digital Transgender Archive, these photographs present challenging ethical questions concerning visibility. When over 440 glass negatives were found in the 1980s in a barn on the farm that was once owned by Høeg and Berg, this particular collection of 31 negatives were all in one box marked ‘private’. If we assume that Høeg or Berg supplied this label, what motivated the desire to keep these private? Would that demand for privacy matter more in the first few decades after they were produced? Or, if an enduring privacy was implied, why keep the negatives at all? ⁴ Additionally, the act of digitizing only these ‘private’ images, instead of the other negatives that presumably include Høeg and Berg's commercial work, highlights the persistent focus on what gender transgression ‘looks like’ instead of how it presents itself in other formats. How would Berg and Høeg feel about seeing these images at the forefront of their legacy, instead of their other photography work?

Whatever the motivation, the labeling of these photographs as ‘private’ appears to have backfired, serving instead as a tempting invitation for persistent fascinations with the photographs (including this article’s contribution to that growing legacy). Given that the photographs were already made available on the Preus Museum website and had been exhibited in a gallery in the US, our discussion about whether to include them in the DTA mainly concerned the impact of our circulation of the images more widely and with a framework of gender transgression. After thinking through how much time has passed, the nature of Høeg’s political work, and how much the gender landscape has changed in the century since they were taken, we ultimately decided to include them on our site and to write about them here. Yet this kind of decision is always a difficult one as we attempt to balance privacy with visibility in the most ethical way possible and we are still not certain that we are getting it right.

The images in this photo essay, and the larger collection from which they are drawn, can be helpfully situated in broader discussions about visibility, such as those included in the recent edited collection Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (Gossett et al., 2017) and Eliza Steinbock’s article in this Themed Issue. These gender-transgressive photographs of Marie Høeg are part of what Gossett et al. refer to as ‘legacies of representation’ (p. xvi) which, for trans and gender non-conforming subjects, is a legacy that is equal parts presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. As we trace these legacies back to historical periods that predate the emergence of trans identity, one risk involves what Steinbock refers to in this Themed Issue as ‘trans visual essentialism’ as we rely on highly suspect visual cues of gender transgression. We also risk violating the privacy of historical subjects as we contribute to the exoticization and hypervisibility of those who are gender non-conforming. These are risks that we believe are worth taking in order to credit Marie Høeg for her worldmaking art that extends beyond her better-known feminist activism and in order to track experiences of gender transgression throughout history. Høeg, and her partner Berg, should be credited for not only having the courage to transgress norms of gender and sexuality in their time, but to powerfully and playfully document those experiences so that we now have a record of their existence.