Olle Pursiainen – Finland

Last year we were honored to bring you a sample of Olle Pursiainen’s work. He is a photographer who has a solid track record of producing dramatic imagery from his native Finland. As his Flickr and Lomography galleries show, he’s become very skilled at finding great images to collect in his own neighborhood. As we’ve seen before, Finland works very well in the pinhole format.

Olle started his photographic journey while studying Statistics and Mathematics at University in the 1970’s. He learned to develop film and work a darkroom on his own, and continued analog until the early 2000’s. After a brief stint with digital, he went back to analog – preferring to stick with his roots. He’s often lugging several of his many many pinhole cameras – from small format to 4×5 – as well as point and shoots and SLR’s. I have the same problem – so long as there’s room in my pack, I’ll stuff it with another camera.

He is drawn to pinhole because of the “freedom to control everything and nothing.” Indeed, this is one of the largest attractions of pinhole, and has been mentioned by other photographers as well. In addition, Olle is drawn to the pinhole format by the “wide angles and warped perspectives,” which offer a degree of creative outlet unrivaled by any other photographic format.

After enjoying the scenes from Olle’s work below, you can find a lot more at his Flickr page and on his Lomography home.

Pack Ice
Pack Ice, ©Olle Pursiainen