The United States has Roswell, but Finland has Pudasjärvi, a town of about 8,400 people that saw a wave of UFO sightings in the late 1960s. Townspeople reported mysterious lights, strange occurrences, and even alien abductions. Fascinating stuff, if you're into that sort of thing, but for photographer Maria Lax, these alien encounters were much more personal.
In late 2013, Lax visited her hometown to see her parents and stumbled upon a copy of Pudasjärven Ufot. It's a collection of first-person accounts of UFO sightings that her grandfather, Soini Lax, gathered in the '70s while working as a journalist. Mr. Lax died earlier that year, and his granddaughter grew fascinated by the strange tales and her connection to them. She decided to reach out to some of the people her grandfather interviewed and began making these haunting images as a homage to their experiences.
Given that the book was more than 30 years old, Lax worried that many of the people had moved away or died. While poking around, she met a retired taxi driver by simply knocking on his door unannounced and introducing herself. He was only too happy to discuss the strange lights he saw overhead all those years ago, and tell her what he know of others who'd had similar experiences. "Luckily he was super lovely and very happy to tell me his story, as was his wife, and they helped me to find more people," she says.
Since then, Lax has interviewed a dozen people, each offering vivid recollections of their curious and often unnerving experiences. Several report having bright, mysterious lights follow them home through the lonely forest. "The area is surrounded by a huge wilderness so you can imagine how eerie something like that is," Lax says. "The people often describe these lights as beautiful and changing in color, and completely silent. There were also some people who claim to have been abducted, and some of the stories that are quite scary - but I'll hold on to those ones for now."
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Lax didn't set out to recreate the scenes in her grandfather's book, but rather offer a sense of what those people experienced. Strange streaks of colorful light pulse through snowy woods, a woman peers through drawn curtains at something eerie outside, an empty gas station awash in light appears vaguely threatening. Lax favored locations from her childhood, choosing sites reminiscent of the stories she's heard. She prefers to wander through town, utilizing available light (often from passing cars) and long exposures to create an otherworldly glow. "Patience is a virtue," she says. "It can take a good while before even a single car shows up."
Lax posts her photos on Instagram as a visual diary, and she's started getting feedback as she's approached 5,000 followers. The project is ongoing, and Lax is currently working on a companion film Lights. The experimental short will cover some of the same territory as the photos, and also examine nighttime and the loneliness that seems to accompany it. The work has left her undecided on the question of UFOs. Some things are better left shrouded in mystery. "I'm not a skeptic, I think there might be something out there," she says. "As one of the people told me, it would be really arrogant to think that in a universe this big that we would be the only ones."
