The prevalence of the extraordinary.

Show me your metro station and I will tell you where you are from... Ok, I do really love pictures of metro/rail stations, believe it or not they tell a little bit about country, people, even politics. (Yeah, overinterpretation, but if it is argued that architecture is a mirror of social mentality, an expression of collective attitudes of the time, why the "law" architecture can't be such a reflection? I don't mean the carbon copy, the "high" architecture is not such either, but it can provide a good starting point to reflect on society.) Funny? Untrue? Boring? Maybe. But have you never tried to figure out what kind of people are waiting at this or that platform? They do not use the place in a way the tourist or the strange enthusiasts of the oridinary do. Whereas those places are only components of their lives, parts that are used to being thrown away from the conscious memory and do not attract our attention, the strangers watch eagerly every movement of the air. We rush through this day-to-day reality without reflecting over all this stuff that the strangers do. I am really fascinated, and worried, with how we miss the essential in our everyday life.

So today I've found some pictures of my everyday humdrum taken from totally new perspective. And they've shed light on how my perception has been reduced. When we are looking at the picture the mundane in a way becames the sacred, the mystique, the dream of all those who have got used to. We miss place we do not know, I miss them! And I thought that now when I do not notice movement of the air any more, I do have to accustom my eyes to the darkness. This is the only way to survive boths as an ethnographist and as a human.

It is so easy to forget that there will not be any palace without striking the match.

And here is my day-to-day magic, step by step...station by station...
Give me yours then.