It can’t be an accident this book appearing at this moment. Michael Rababy’s CASINOLAND –Tired of Winning, foresees an America ready for the cheap thrill that is Trump. CASINOLAND is an absurdist look at everything that is tawdry and meaningless about the current moment using Las Vegas Casinos and the people who spend their days in the funhouse as its subject. Oh Michael, what a fine job seeing the last days of the Roman Empire in the deserts of Nevada.
Shot in the casinos and on the streets of Vegas and Reno over the last thirty years, often with a concealed camera, Rababy fills page after page with pictures of lives seemingly without meaning, grace, wit or charm. They are gaudy, bawdy and unutterably sad at least in part because we know the promise’s made by these places and in the 21st goddamn century we might have known better but nope.
These pictures are not always easy to look at and yet this is work in the Humanist tradition, albeit an Absurdist Human. In some ways they remind you of Weegee, in others like the Roman Paparazzi. They relentlessly poke a gentle finger in your eye asking you to really, I’m not kidding, really take a look. It’s not clear whether Rababy is following some school, or he is creating a new one alongside guys like Scot Sothern and others who show us things overlooked or unimagined but either way if you want a peek past the current conventional wisdom of what we look like here’s your opportunity.
Truth in advertising, I know Michael and Scot and others who are pushing past the weight of the photographic past to show us what we currently walk by unseeing and what they have to show us isn’t always pleasant. There is much about life that is not like this and we have museums and galleries and sometimes even our own eyes filled with beauty to prove it … but in this moment when so much hidden from many of us has been revealed it has been there all along if you were looking for it. And Micheal Rababy was there getting ready to show it to you.
Andy Romanoff
Andy Romanoff’s book Stories I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You is available as an eBook everywhere including Amazon and as a printed book here – Stories I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
His Website is – https://www.andyromanoff.com/
Michael Rababy : CASINOLAND–Tired of Winning
Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg
Hardcover
160 pages – 115 color illustrations
ISBN 978-3-96900-164-6
www.kehrerverlag.com
Michael Rababy – Instagram: @Fullonrad
