Gunnie Moberg
Quick Facts
Biography
Gun Margoth Moberg (8 May 1941 - 31 October 2007) was a Swedish photographer and artist who worked in Scotland. Her work includes photography of the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands.
Personal Life
Gunnie Morberg was born in Gothenburg. Her father, Åke Moberg, was an accountant and her mother, Margot Lundblad, was an amateur painter. Her desire to develop her photographic skills caused her to leave school at the age of 16.
She started to work in a photographer's studio but moved to Edinburgh a year later. In Edinburgh, she worked as an au pair and studied pottery at the Edinburgh College of Art, where she met the Californian artist Tam MacPhail. They married in January 1961 and had four sons. They initially settled in Argyll but moved to Orkney in 1976, after Gunnie Moberg's visit in 1975.
Her husband ran a bookshop in Stromness called 'Stromness Books & Prints', which published her first photographic book in 1979. Between 1977 and 1979, the St Magnus Festival and the Pier Arts Centre were established. The St Magnus Festival appointed her photographer in residence, a role that she held for nearly thirty years.
Her popularity as a photographer grew through the years, but she turned to painting in her later years. She passed away at the age of 66 in Stromness.
Artistic Work
Morberg's first publication was Stone Built in 1979. In this book, the photographer collected 18 aerial pictures she took across Orkney. She subsequently published a number of photographic books, her main subject being the landscapes of the North Atlantic.
In 1986 Moberg started a collaboration with the poet George Mackay Brown. Together, they published five books in which Moberg's photographs interweaved with George Mackay Brown's poetry. She also collaborated with the Norwegian author Liv Kjørsvik Schei. This collaboration gave birth to The Orkney Story (1985) and The Shetland Story (1988).
Publications
- 1979: Stone Built. Stormness Books & Prints
- 1985: The Orkney Story. Batsford Grøndahl.
- 1986: The Loom of Light. Balnain Books
- 1987: Stone. Kulgin Duval & Colin Hamilton.
- 1987: A Celebration for Magnus. Balnain Books.
- 1988: A Portrait of Orkney. John Murray.
- 1990: A Bit of Crack and Car Culture. Balnain Books.
- 1991: The Faroe Islands. John Murray.
- 1991: The Shetland Story. Batsford.
- 1996: Orkney Pictures & Poems. Colin Baxter.
- 1998: Orcades. Editions Apogée
- 2000: The Island of Orkney. Colin Baxter.
- 2002: St Magnus Festival. A Celebration. Orcadian.
- 2006: Orkney. Birlinn.
- 2006: The Shetland Islands. Colin Baxter.