Signe Brander (1869–1942)

Signe Brander was born in Parkano, Finland, and spent her childhood and youth in Kokkola. In 1891, following the death of her father, a customs official, the family moved to Helsinki. There Brander took a course in the University of Art and Design to become a drawing teacher, but later focused on photography. In 1906, the city of Helsinki founded an antiquities board, and one of its roles was to document the city in photographs. The board hired Brander for the assignment. She is best-known for these photos taken from 1906 to 1913 that reflected the changing city scape of Helsinki, a time of great social, political, and physical change within Finland in the early 20th century. They are continuously among the most popular in the Helsinki City Museum order catalog. Brander was also remarkable for being one of the first female photographers to be commissioned for such a job. She also toured Finland taking photos of old battlefields for a centenary memorial book of the Finnish War of 1809-1809. In 1910 she started a project that would take 20 years, photographing Finnish estates; the project generated more than 2,000 photos. Some of these were published in the book Herrgårdar i Finland (1928–1929).