The Norwegian interest in photography developed in the 1970s. The Society of Fine Art Photographers, the photographers own artist-organization, was established in 1974. This meant grants, the right to negotiate and photographic galleries. The Photographer’s Gallery, Norway’s only gallery dedicated to camera-based art, was established in 1977. It was however not until the 1990s that a higher education in photographic art was established, at Bergen Academy of Art - Fine Arts Library and Design Library. Artists playing an essential role in the development of the Norwegian photographic scene, such as Mikkel McAlinden, Vibeke Tandberg and Torbjørn Rødland, graduated here in the middle of the 1990s. After this, the interest in photography has expanded greatly.

In 1995 Norway’s only national photographic museum was established, Norwegian Museum of Photography, Preus Photography Museum. In 2001 the museum opened in new premises in Horten outside of Oslo. It is owned by the Norwegian state and has overall responsibility for the preservation, collection and dissemination of photographs in Norway, with a particular focus on artistic photographs.

In 1995 photographic art was incorporated in the Norwegian copyright act. It was not until 2004, however, that the Norwegian Ministry of Finance removed the VAT on photographic art in order for it to be recognized on the same premises as painting and sculpture. This gives evidence to the slow birth photography really has had in Norway, compared to other art forms. While the staged, digitally manipulated photography dominated Norwegian photographic art, with executants such as Tandberg, McAlinden and Ole John Aandal, in the 1990s, a so-called new-realism, a more documentary tendency, has dominated the 2000s. At the beginning of 2000, Norwegian photographic art can generally be characterised by a move from the private room dominating in the 1990s towards a more social, urban or architectural setting where the dialogue between nature and culture, as an example, has been important. Here photographers such as Marte Aas, Anne-Grethe Thoresen, Eline Mugaas, Mette Tronvoll, Hedvig Anker, Dag Nordbrenden, Marius Engh og Torbjørn Rødland can be mentioned. See http://www.fotogalleriet.no for further information on Norwegian photography

The independent production of video art also started in the 1970s in Norway. However, the number of artists were few and the access to equipment was almost non existent, let alone expensive. One of the first video art pieces that were publically shown in Norway, was at the exhibition Høstutstillingen in 1975. At about the same time, the first educational initiatives in the field of video art were initiated at the National Academy of Fine Art. In this early period Henie-Onstad Art Centre and its 'media workshop', situated just outside Oslo, was a sort of sanctuary for artist working within new medias such as video. The first Norwegian exhibition fully devoted to video art took place in 1984 in Gallery 1 in Bergen, with among others showed works by Kristin Bergaust and Kjell Bjørgeengen. Three years later Norsk Videogramforening organised Videokunstfestivalen, a video art-festival, in Trondheim, where among others artists such as Kjell Bjørgeengen, Marianne Heske and Ivar Smestad participated. The same year Galleri F15 organised a video-exhibition where Nam June Paik and Dara Birnbaum were represented, as well as for example the Norwegian artist Sven Påhlsson and Marianne Heske. Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad has also been important in establishing a Norwegian video art-scene having incorporated video art into their short-film screening in the middle of the 1980s. In 1993 the production network “Atelier Nord” built up an independent department for video art and played as such an essential role for norwegian videoartists in the 1990s. The Intermedia department at the Art Academy in Trondheim (now part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim) was established by Jeremy Welsh in the 1990s and should also be mentioned. After the video medium became digital it has expanded greatly. Today artists such as Jannicke Låker, Anne Katrine Dolven, Knut Åsdam, Anne Lise Stenseth, Lotto Konow Lund, Andrea Lange and Bodil Furu are important executants of a medium that has finally found a legitimate place on the Norwegian art scene.