Satijn Panyigay has been photographing temporarily vacant interior spaces extensively over the past years – empty museums, depots, new or repurposed buildings and homes. In her latest project Nightcall (2024), she turns her lens to nocturnal exteriors. Captured overnight in the urban environment of Utrecht, the Netherlands, her compositions highlight brief moments of stillness in otherwise bustling spaces. Panyigay takes long nighttime walks and seeks out unintended compositions within the industrial structures.

For Nightcall, Panyigay works with her analogue camera, long exposures and the minimal light that the night provides. In her images, she makes use of the moonlight as well as the artificial street lights, and the difference is hard to tell apart. The artist employs this light to find contrast in the gloomy monotone and functional industrial landscape. It can appear in the glow of the windows in the dark, reflections of the moon in the anonymous facades, or in the shimmer of the closed-off blinds.

In Panyigay’s geometrical compositions, the absence of people paradoxically yields a palpable sense of presence. The artist is drawn to the ethereal realm of the night and its enigmatic allure. The series encapsulates a separate world, mirroring ours, yet imbued with an eerie detachment.

With her work, Panyigay hopes to carve out space for tranquility which is, according to the artist, underappreciated in the haste of our contemporary culture. In Nightcall, the relentless pace of modern work life twists inside-out. Clean architectural abstractions and graphic shapes introduce the profound simplicity of a pause.