.commuting (pt. I)

This series existed only in my head for a long time. The picture of Hakaniemi subway station in Helsinki (header image) was one of the first shots in the series I saw as “Commuting”. But along the way I shot many a picture which, I figured out later, would all come to fit in this series of images.

Escalators

The image of the escalators cooked in my head for a good number of years. When I first came to Finland in the end of the nineties, these escalators in Kamppi subway station, were one of the longest in Europe. I found them very photogenic from the first time I set foot on them. Only back then I had a cheaper film camera with not too good glass. The few images I did shoot were really just a waste of film. (Deleting is SO much easier and cheaper these days!) It was not until a full decade later that I shot the one in this portfolio. I wanted them to be empty. But yeah… Good luck with that, in one of the busiest subway stations in the capital of a country. I managed a few images with a few people in them and with such a long exposure that most of the people were entirely blurred, but that was actually quite boring. Until I got this bold idea. I would just step in closer, set up the tripod to block the center escalator─just for a moment─so that would be empty and there’d be people on the two outer escalators. That turned out very nice, I think. And no… also no police involved in this one, but yes, I did get some angry looks and some bad words. But alas… how nice it is to be able to pretend you’re just a weird foreign tourist?

More images from the commuting series you can find in the Fine Arts section here. Over time I will add a few more posts here with the stories behind the images. All images are available as prints.