Eric A. Hegg

Eric A. Hegg (September 17, 1867 – December 13, 1947), sometimes Eric A. Hägg, was a Swedish-American photographer famous for his portrayals of the life and people in Skagway, Bennett and Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush 1897–1901. Hegg himself participated in prospecting expeditions with his brother and fellow Swedes while documenting the daily life and hardships of the gold diggers.

The most iconic photograph taken by Eric Hegg is by the Chilkoot Pass where miners and prospectors are climbing the ice stairs upwards to the top and the awaiting Canada–US border. Eric A. Hegg has been subject of books and films in Sweden embodying The American Dream since he was able to leave his humble situation in Sweden behind and become a self-made man and successful photographer.

Hegg was born as Erik Jonsson in 1867 in Bollnäs socken, Hälsingland, Sweden, as the second eldest son to the crofter Jon Persson and his wife Brita Ersdotter in a family of eight (four sons and two daughters). Due to repeated displacement to smaller outfields deeper into the forest land, the whole family left for United States in April 1881. At the arrival in New York City the family gave up their Swedish surnames and adopted the family name Hegg (derived from Heggesta, the name of their Swedish area of origin). The family settled in the Swedish settlements at the southern shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin and the fourteen-year-old Eric Hegg took up the profession as a photographer's disciple in Cloquet, Minnesota and later opened an own studio in Washburn, Wisconsin.

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