A 19-year-old student spy showed how the world looked in the 19th century

19-year-old student Carl Fredrik Myulertsa Stormera (Fredrik Carl Mülertz Størmer), who lived from 1872 to 1957, can be considered a first, at least in Norway, paparazzi. Karl developed a compact spy camera that could be hidden under clothing and secretly take pictures. Actually, that's what he did in the 1890s: man walking on the streets of Oslo (then Christiania), greet people, but when they were greeted back, pulled the cord in his trouser pocket and photographed interlocutors.

The whole value of these images is that people are shown in a natural setting, which was different from the strict positional requirements that dominated photography in those years. Thanks to the photographs of Karl Stermer we can see the European fashion of the late XIX century, the manner of communication, the leisure of people, as well as architecture and transportation.