TRANSITIONAL STATES

In Ola Rindal’s photography, things seem perpetually on the verge of slipping away. Through a raw yet refined and nuanced aesthetic, a poetry of the everyday emerges, infused with understated melancholy.

We asked Ola to photograph moments that go unnoticed unless one pays attention. In December 2024, during journeys between his hometown, Paris, and his birthplace, Norway, he captured people and objects in states of transition.

Ola’s images may seem accidental, as if taken by someone getting a lucky shot with their first camera. But upon closer inspection, they reveal an artist in full command of his craft and intention. In the coincidental nature of everyday life, he uncovers hidden moments, transforming them into images of elusive beauty.

“I photograph quite a lot based on my everyday life. What I see around me. When I walk the kids to school, or if I'm just walking. If there's something that repeats itself and that I notice I'm interested in, then I might start digging into it and try to build on it. It's like discovering that you have a kind of theme that you’re intuitively drawn to,” says Ola.

“You ask yourself a question about the visual world around you. There's a car over there, a tree over there, and a house over there. And people are walking by. And then you become interested in the spaces in between. Trying to give a language to the things you're talking about that aren't either one or the other. That isn’t the car or the house or the person in between. But something else, you know?” he adds. “Something that exists in the gaps. And that's probably something I've been fascinated by and interested in—trying to give a language to what doesn’t have a language.”

In his photography, Ola searches for true, unrepeatable moments. “I want something to happen that I find interesting—like a bird landing on a branch, a small light on a wall, or a deer suddenly appearing in a clearing, creating a magical atmosphere. I look for things that don’t happen twice.”

These are moments that, in his eyes, have a sense of enigma. He says he thinks beauty often lies “very close to the ugly.” That tension and resonance which sometimes occur between things are essential to his photography. It raises questions in the viewer’s mind and makes us see everyday things in a new light.

When asked how he arranges his images for an exhibition or a book, he replies that he doesn’t think in terms of stories that much. He is more concerned with creating a rhythm. His approach is similar to composing a poetry collection. “It’s about creating a feeling. And by arranging the images in a certain way, you create an atmosphere rather than a narrative,” he says.

Ola’s preference for equipment is very much based on size and weight. “Some people say a good camera is the one you carry with you. If you have a big, bulky 4:5-inch camera, it can be good. But if it just remains at home all the time, then maybe it’s not that useful. So, in that sense, it can be good to have a practical camera that’s easy to take with you.”

“I’ve always worked with small, light cameras that I can take with me everywhere. Cameras that I can work with relatively quickly. That I can have ready when I see something,” he explains.

“And I like it if the lens is just the right length, not too long and not too short. I’m not one of those wide-angle people. I like 50mm. I have two lenses that I always use: a 50mm and an 80mm. I feel like I really don’t need much more. I guess it represents how I see the world, in a way.”

Ola's venture into photography began with a stolen key and a borrowed camera. The key was to his school’s darkroom, and the camera belonged to his father. Growing up in Lillehammer, in the Norwegian countryside, there was very little to do, so he and his friends experimented in the darkroom and shot with his father’s camera for fun. “I got bitten by the photography bug that way,” he says when we speak with him about the images he shot with the BF camera. “I was quite shy, and photography became my way of speaking.”

He never considered any other forms of artistic expression. There was just something about photography that clicked for him. “At first, it allowed me to let things out. But over time, I realized photography is about saying something about my world and how I see it.”

Today, Ola lives in Paris with his family, working on commissions for top fashion brands and magazines. But his true joy comes from capturing the everyday world—whether it’s the streets of Paris or Tokyo, or the snowy countryside of Norway.