Ola Kolehmainen: "A museum is for me a tabula rasa, an empty slate that possesses an atmosphere to which I want to acclimatise myself. At first I just familiarise myself with being in the space, observing it. I take a huge number of pictures as fast and as intuitively as I can. I spend hours or days in the space, observing how it changes with the hours of the day.”
The Finnish photographer became known for his minimalistic close ups of architectural details including surfaces and patterns; from steel and tiles to glass. For a long time, he was particularly fascinated with the work of the revered modernists, like Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto. By focusing on details, Kolehmainen wants us to cherish the materials and forms, and to rethink how a building is perceived. For his newer work, Kolehmainen found inspiration in the architecture of historical buildings (like museums) and sacred spaces. Kolehmainen actively strives for a kind of artistic neutrality, embracing all these spaces - whether it’s a mosque, museum, synagogue, church, basilica or cathedral - with the same mindset. Yet, shooting his projects is often not as easy as it sounds: his project surrounding religious buildings took years of careful planning and dealing with bureaucratic institutions and in some cases, it even required an incognito stake out in advance, in which he took notes on the patterns of the changing light. Through techniques of fragmentation and deconstruction, Kolehmainen gains a sense of abstraction in many of his work, but he does not use any kind of digital manipulation. In the end result, Kolehmainen manages to capture the sublime essence of these spaces.