Guillaume Berggren

Pehr Vilhelm Berggren, known as Guillaume Berggren, (20 March 1835, Stockholm – 26 August 1920, Istanbul) was a Swedish photographer active in Istanbul.

Biography He was born to a poor family with many children and left home to become apprenticed to a carpenter. Within a few years, he found a position as an assistant to the Master Carpenter, Carl Knut Edberg (?-1896). On his recommendation, Berggren was able to obtain a passport without an expiration date, and began traveling in 1855.

While visiting Berlin, he became acquainted with a female photographer and was given his first lessons in photography. She died shortly after, and he inherited her camera. İstiklal Avenue.

Eventually, as the price and size of cameras decreased, and tourists were able to buy their own, he found it increasingly difficult to make a living. At one point, he was apparently forced to sell some of his glass negatives to gardeners, who used them to build greenhouses. Luckily, word of this reached officials in the German embassy, who purchased most of his negatives in 1916.