Absence

Lance Pearce, Untitled (2010), Photography.

'What I find most important in the habitual surroundings from the point of view of aesthetics is the contrast to strangeness, the relevance of the everydayness. We take pleasure in the being in the surroundings we are used to, and fulfilling our normal routines. The aesthetics of everydayness is exactly in the "hiding" of the extraordinary and disturbing, and feeling homey and in control. One could paradoxically say that the aesthetics of the familiar is an aesthetics of the "lacking," the quiet fascination of the absence of visual, auditory, and any other kinds of demands from the surroundings.'

Arto Haapala, On the Aesthetics of the Everyday, Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place, Andrew Light and Jonathan Smith, eds., Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005, 39.