Kari N. Berggrav (November 30, 1911 Norway - June 11, 1996 Lewisburg, Pennsylvania)[1] was a pioneer Norwegian photojournalist and war photographer.
The bishop was soon imprisoned by the Gestapo, but managed to lead the resistance of the Norwegian church from within prison and survive the war.
[4] At this time, she first met Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst and early disciple of Freud who then had strong left-wing sympathies.
When the Germans invaded Norway, she was official photographer for the Norwegian General Command until the surrender when she escaped to Finland.
From there, by way of Russia, Iran, India, South Africa, Montreal, Toronto, she made her way to the United States.
Kari was the only female passenger on this ship, so the crew, wishing to give her some privacy, made her a cabin within the wooden cases of gold bars in the hold.
[12] She trekked overland to Hollywood, working as a retoucher for Disney and contributing photo-essays to “Popular Photography” magazine.
This period of intense activity in radio and photojournalism was part of a wider effort directed by the Norwegian government-in-exile to persuade Norwegian Americans to lobby Federal government of the United States to enter the European theatre of World War II.
At the end of this period, she clearly had some sort of breakdown which she describes in the November 1945 issue of "Popular Photography in the text of a photo-essay about cats.
[14] She regained contact with the psycho-analyst Wilhelm Reich, from whose circle she received treatment for mental illness from the time she first met him in Norway.