Left - An Andrew Dahl Stereoview of Springdale Wisconsin

Andrew Dahl Image
Added To Archives

In May of this year, the Society received an e-mail from Madison resident Gary Tippler, alerting the Society to an interesting stereoscopic image on e-bay. Andrew Dahl of DeForest took the image. It shows a group of three men and a dog looking toward Blue Mounds. The image is important to the Society’s collection because it is an early overview of our collecting area. With Gary’s financial help we were able to purchase the image. The view compliments a number of other Andrew Dahl images that are in the Society’s archives.

So, who was Andrew Dahl, and why are his images so important?

Andreas Larson Dahlen was born in 1844 in rural Norway. His older brother Nels Dahlen immigrated to America in 1861, and settled in DeForest, Wisconsin. After their father died in 1868, Andreas and his mother came to live with Nels in America. Perhaps to Americanize his name, Andreas became Andrew Dahl, and took up photography as a livelihood. 

Dahl specialized in stereo photography, which was a very popular format. The photos were taken with a small format camera with two lenses. When developed and mounted, the photographs appear three-dimensional in a viewing device called a stereoscope or stereopticon. 

Although Dahl’s home and print-house was located in Deforest, he spent much of his time traveling throughout Southern Wisconsin. As a traveling salesperson, he traveled throughout the area, promoting and applying his photography skills. For the next 10 years, from 1870 to 1879, Andrew Dahl covered many miles with his horse-drawn darkroom, recording the life of many 1st generation immigrants. He would pose families in front of their homesteads with their favorite possessions, pets, and furniture. Often his views would show farmers in their fields or posed for a dramatic stereoscopic effect. The Society archives contain several Dahl views of “Old Town” Mt. Horeb, various area farmsteads and the dedication of the East Blue Mound Church.

Andrew Dahl continued photographing until 1879 when he was stricken with typhoid fever.  He swore that if he recovered he would dedicate his life to God.  Being true to his word, he entered the Norwegian Lutheran Seminary in Madison and was ordained as a minister in 1883. Andrew Dahl died of a stroke in 1923.

Today, Dahl’s images are historically important because of their rarity. Generally, only a small number of prints were made for the family and a great number of those were sent overseas to show family and friends their new country. Though Dahl’s stereoviews often lack the technical expertise of his peers, what he left to our generation is a remarkable record of early Wisconsin settlers.