You’ve boarded a crowded night train, it’s noisy, full of unfamiliar smells and languages. In time, the collection of anonymous humanity sleeps, and the only sound is the carriage on the train tracks; but you stay aware, watching – a voyeur… But this isn’t your journey, this is a description of the photographs of Arja Hyytiainen who’s stunningly beautiful black and white images reflect her transient life and act as an impressionistic record of one woman’s journey living in 5 different countries over the past twelve years.

This collection of rough treasures contains endless layers of chance glances, brief and intimate encounters, all emitting echoes of late nights, serious drinking, cigarettes, laughter in dark, unfamiliar spaces and snow-covered urban areas that quietly hum with a restless population. There are photographs when the viewer sits in that crowded, night train beside the artist, looking through her eyes, like a silent conspirator on a journey filled with other faceless, yet strangely familiar travellers. All locked in time with the click of her shutter. One can almost smell damp clothes, vodka, diesel and the musty apartments that make up these endless nights in Hyytiainen’s work.

Originally from Finland but travelling in different parts of Europe for the past 12 years, Arja Hyytiainen’s photographs are vibrant, not staged or constructed. They are the reflections of a woman living and travelling alone today. There is something ineffable in these grainy, black and white documents, something universally familiar that invites the viewer into her story. The subjects are not objectified, their impressions are only reflections captured as they were found on the way to her next destination.

The faces and locations that Hyytiainen chooses to document are grounding points for her as she travels. Many of the people who populate her images exist in a zone outside of accepted society. She says that travel is not merely escape or adventure for her – it’s a way of feeling more alive, of reaching her next goal and that these people and places are familiar. What began for her as a ‘rebellious reaction’, a desire to document places not deemed acceptable for women to photograph, Hyytiainen’s work has evolved into a body of very personal images. Although drawn from an interest in reportage photography, her work has evolved into a sharp contemporary vision of a woman artist living in the world in a very untraditional way.

Present throughout the work whether captured in Warsaw, Berlin, Paris or Ukraine is the static vibration of urban existence landscapes littered with empty bottles, fallen figures in the snow. Soundless laughter tumbles out of wide-open mouths, frozen and… audible. Breathtaking landscapes, act much like a sigh of relief, moments of contemplation stolen before the artist’s wandering begins again.

Hyytiainen will soon return to her home country of Finland to continue her journey making images of the place she left twelve years ago. She hopes to continue to capture these vibrations and impressions of her travels, but this time in her own home place. Arja Hyytiainen is creating a time capsule through her art. Crafting an amazingly dynamic document of her wandering life.