I grew up in Flekkefjord, a small town on the southern coast of Norway. When I later moved to Oslo, the distance between the two places felt greater than the kilometres suggested.

At first, the city was intimidating. Very quickly, it became liberating.

There was freedom in the anonymity, in the diversity, in discovering that life could be lived in many different ways. The distance from the small-town environment I grew up in gave me room to see both where I came from and who I was becoming.

I have now lived and worked in Oslo for almost twice as long as I lived in Flekkefjord. Still, when I say home, part of me means that small town in the south. Those formative years left their marks — some good, some less so.

Perhaps that is why distance has become part of the way I photograph.

Sometimes it is physical: a person observed across a room, a figure in a street, a landscape seen from afar. Sometimes it is emotional. Close enough to feel something, but far enough away to leave space for questions.

These photographs were made in very different places, at very different times. What connects them is not their subject, but a certain distance between myself, what I saw, and what I chose to show.

Maybe distance is not only what separates us from something.

Sometimes it is what allows us to see.