Photographing the Alien: Wessel and Sámi Visibility

This paper examines how Ellisif Wessel’s photographs of the Norwegian-Russian border region (late 19th–early 20th century) construct and complicate the figure of the “alien.” Sent with her husband to Kirkenes as part of Norway’s campaign to “Norwegianize” its frontier after independence, Wessel became one of the country’s earliest female photographers. She produced thousands of images, published a book on the border, and circulated postcards, while also gaining recognition as a labor activist who organized miners and sheltered Russian refugees. Yet her photographic practice participated in colonial projects, portraying Sámi communities as exotic strangers within their own land.

Drawing on Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s concept of “unruly photographs”—images that resist their original purpose—this paper explores how Wessel’s photographs have been reappropriated in contemporary Sámi cultural and literary revival. While initially aligned with assimilationist agendas, her images inadvertently documented ancestral practices that were later suppressed, allowing them to resurface as counter-archives of Indigenous presence. As land rights battle tense in Norway, the photographs question who the real stranger is.

By situating Wessel’s work within the entangled histories of settler colonialism, labor activism, and border-making, the paper highlights the paradox of the region as a site where settler women gained visibility and rights even as Sámi communities were disenfranchised. In doing so, it reflects on how visual culture produces, sustains, and at times unsettles the categories of alienness and belonging.