Marie Høeg

About

Marie Høeg was a key figure in Norway’s suffragette movement at the start of the 20th century. She was born in Langesund in 1866 and lived there until she moved to Finland in her early 20s to train as a photographer. In 1895, she returned home to Norway with her lover Bolette Berg.

Both Berg and Høeg were professional photographers and settled in Horten. Høeg quickly became one of the leading activists in the fight for women’s right to vote.

As well as her political work, Høeg explored gender and gender roles through her photographs. Her self-portraits are of high artistic quality and pose fundamental and critical questions about identity and what it means to be a woman. Høeg’s photographs thus anticipate key issues in modern feminism. What sets Marie Høeg apart from the other prominent suffragettes at the start of the last century is that – through both the way she lived and her photography – she asks questions that are still relevant today.