Pictures of the week: Commuters, by Arnau Oriol

There are few better places to ponder life than from the window seat of a train. Whatever the view, urban or pastoral, time spent travelling on rails is perfect for reflecting and dreaming.→ Photograph: Arnau Oriol

These anonymous early-morning commuters, bound for Liverpool Street as they pass through Bethnal Green station in east London, are certainly deep in thought.→
Photograph: Arnau Oriol

The stillness at the heart of Arnau Oriol’s portraits is somehow enhanced by the movement of the train, and by the way his subjects appear frozen behind glass, as if in a bubble.→ Photograph: Arnau Oriol

At the end of their journeys – coffees drunk, papers read – they seem to be savouring their last few moments of calm before they disembark into the crowds and head to work. They’re not sad, but there is about them an air of thoughtful melancholy.→
Photograph: Arnau Oriol

Oriol photographed from a station platform as the trains trundled past, or halted briefly. For the most part, he shot blindly, at random, not knowing who would end up in his frame.→
Photograph: Arnau Oriol

But when the trains were moving more slowly, or at a standstill, he was able to pick out faces that caught his eye, ideally before they noticed him.→
Photograph: Arnau Oriol

'I preferred it when they hadn’t spotted me,' he explains, 'and so couldn’t react to my presence. That way, I could capture their natural state of introspection. To me, such moments are full of beauty.' During the six months, on and off, that he took to shoot the project, Oriol would often see the same people twice. The strongest shots, he says, are the people who make you wonder: what are they thinking? Often, a small gesture is all it takes: the man (above) with his hand clamped over his mouth surely has quite a lot on his mind.→ Photograph: Arnau Oriol

The act of shooting is instinctive, Oriol says. 'Somehow, the camera works exactly like my eye: the train pulls away, slowly accelerating. There is someone by the window. I follow them, ‘blink’, and the image of that person is frozen, this time inside my camera.'

For more on Arnau Oriol, go to arnauoriol.com Photograph: Arnau Oriol