Fritz Victor Hasselblad was born in the Swedish port city of Gothenburg (Göteborg) on 8 March, 1906. The Hasselblad family were successful merchants who, since 1841, had mostly specialised in textiles and clothing, but in 1885, branched out into the fledgling medium of photography. In 1888, F.W. Hasselblad & Co became the exclusive Swedish distributor of Eastman Kodak products. A couple of years after Victor was born, in 1908, the family company established a new division called Hasselblads Fotografiska AB – Hasselblad Photographic Limited – which created a chain of retail outlets and photo processing facilities all over Sweden.
Not surprisingly, the young Victor developed a keen interest in photography from an early age, along with a great enthusiasm for anything to do with nature, but in particular birds. These two hobbies would eventually come together to help change the course of camera design. Victor was so keen on being in the field that his school studies suffered, although he excelled at biology and botany. Eventually his father, Karl Erik, an engineer by profession, decided an apprenticeship in the family business would be more beneficial than finishing school. The teenager was also sent to Dresden in Germany to learn more about the camera business. He worked for ICA-Werken – which later became Zeiss Ikon – learning much about the workings of cameras and lenses and, in the process, also becoming fluent in German. Now aged 20, Victor subsequently moved to Paris where he worked in the Kodak-Pathe shop on the Avenue de l’Opera and learned French (he also became fluent in Dutch and, of course, English).
Wherever he was in the world, he continued to pursue his twin passions for ornithology and photography. In 1926, Victor moved to the USA and worked for Kodak at its headquarters in Rochester. While there, he came to the attention of the company’s founder, George Eastman, who invited him to dinner on quite a few occasions. Eventually, Victor returned to Sweden
