Elisabeth Meyer

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Elisabeth Meyer (1899 – 1968) was a Norwegian photographer who is best known for her photojournastic work from travels through Iran and India in the 1920s and 1930s, among them early photographs of Mahatma Gandhi. According to unverified sources, she may have been the first Western woman to travel through Iran.

Meyer was born in Tønsberg to an affluent family. Her father gave her a Kodak Folding Camera for her travels, which seems to have led to her professional choice later. She joined the Oslo Camera Club in 1932, and then traveled to Berlin in 1937 to study photography at the Reimann School, where she studied with Walter Peterhans and Otto Croy. She worked as an apprentice for Joszef Pécsi in Budapest before returning to Norway, where she spent the war years.