During her European journey, Arja Hyytiänien never looks to describe, but is in keeping with the world through her encounters with people. Photography permits her to preserve the emotions of these encounters. Truly contemporary, free and demanding, Arja’s work is part of the present school, issued from the tradition of street photography, that renewed the form of it, to claim an author status.

At the tram stop, mumbled words pierce the ceaseless and echoing rain. Standing there, focused, I try to remember what drove me here to collect these precious moments of life. Something guided me here mid-November, like a dog chasing a bone, with the calming instinctive reassurance that I will find something. I am determined to see past these faces. Paths that lead nowhere. Today, reflecting on what time I have left on this voyage, reminiscing distances myself from all this. In several Balinka bars of Jozsfevaros where the homeless dance to the tunes emanating from the jukebox, I try to answer questions I do not understand. Always: the question on the importance of communication, but...

August. As there’d be a mental hangover that residences permanently over Marseille. Closed windowpanes let echo of the occasional bywalker of the burning pavement on the afternoon. The ventilators low humming. A cry of a seagull passing in the harbour. Someone said that the wind drives people mad. Night . Illegal bars. Gatherings of marked faces. Restless energy that circles in the night only to turn back into a hot humid day again where light breaks your vision. Heat like a second skin. Dust turning in circles. Seeking to identify, to capture a moment. Marseilles.

When the fashion world is under the critics for the physical health of the models, Arja Hyytiaïnen does not hesitate to show the backstage of the runaway shows of the Parisian fashion week. And the models, as depicted by the photographer, are very skinny indeed. Lonely too. The lcothes they're wearing are the focus point of everybody. Once their turn on the catlwalk over, they are going back to be completely forgotten.

Christmas and winter time. When the year is changing, people gather around their homes and families. I decided to go the opposite way, traveling through Germany, Poland and Ukraine. Hero Water is a story dealing with intuitive meetings, time and personal recordings on the road to Eastern Europe in winter time. A subjective road story concentrated in one month. The title inspired by the polish vodka that makes you a hero for the moment being. I traveled by train from Paris to Berlin over Christmas, continuing to Poland, Warsaw and Styczhno for the New Year and finally to Kiev and Kirovograd in Ukraine.

Arja Hyytiäinen proposes a journey at the borders of the European Union, where cultures and geostrategic interests meet. But the photographer portrays more than trying to explain. Her pictures are full of moments which have directed her shooting : hanging moments, stretched in time with the help of the photographic action. Arja Hyytiäinen’s pictures seem to come straight out of a dream, and yet, they are the witness of a complete reality, even if this is not the one that we expected.

It was a deliberate choice to portrait the mental ill patients the way I did. I started with that project working with a 35mm camera trying to make a documentary of the hospital and the patients. I realized very soon that it was impossible for me to stay objective and I wanted to turn the question around. To produce a series of work that is possible to do with photography. You can portrait a person in so many ways and what is the truth? The image remains as the photographer’s interpretation in every case. So, I depicted those strong faces, so to see if mental illness can be seen in an image. As soon as I understood that there was no possibility for me to be objective, the whole work became...

The rain is ice cold and the wind wines in the house corners. The fishing boats rock across the lake, the dog's scolding dies to the distorted sound of Valteris radio, which leans against the weather bitten fisher cottage's wall, consulted by some unclear words, though a clear day one can hear the echo all over the village Venehjärvi. The whitefish ridicule country; Republic of Karelia in Russia, the place where a song was born of the pike's abdomen, where Elias Lönnrot on 1830’s strolled around collecting materials to the the Finnish nation alder Kalevala. The poet villages where the people and the natura still live in complete balance, handicraft is an inherited matter and the common...