I’m a professor of visual culture in the Department of Art and Media Studies at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Trondheim, where I coordinate the Media, Data, Museums research group. My research explores the labour, systems, technologies, and infrastructures that underpin visual culture from the early 1800s to the present. A recurring topic is how photographic technologies and practices persist in the digitized materials of online archives.
At IFFS I am involved in the project Selling Pictures: Pictorial Economy and Commoditization, 1820–2020, which traces the genealogy of contemporary AI-generated image hype over 200 years of promoting technologies for the production, reproduction, and circulation of pictures on a mass scale. It aims to understand the historical role of pictures not merely as commodities but as agents of commerce. The project focuses on emerging picture techniques in the 1820s, 1920s, and 2020s, examining iconographic and discursive patterns in pictures of mass reproduction (metapictures) and comparing vernacular picture theories—expressed in advertising copy and trade journalism—with canonical picture theories. Rooted in historical material practices, the project seeks to clarify and expand our understanding of how and why pictures play a central role in the work of selling in modern and contemporary societies.
Vestberg, Nina Lager (2025). Reproducing a Nation: The Photomechanical Construction of Norway 1884–1905. Photography and Culture 0 (0): 1–20
Vestberg, Nina Lager (2024). Source, Surrogate, Store, and Search: Significant Sites in Post-Digitized Art History. In Critical Digital Art History, eds. Amanda Wasielewski and Anna Näslund. Intellect
Vestberg, Nina Lager (2023). Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization. The MIT Press
