An enormous chain of keys hangs from the belt loop of a man’s trousers, their weight threatening to pull his pants down. This photograph is representative of all the keys we have in our lives, says Israeli photographer Rubi Lebovitch.
Keys to our house, the office, a bicycle lock, our parent’s home, keys we keep, but can’t remember their purpose. Keys we resist getting rid of because we don’t know what they might open. It is a scenario that most can relate to. We all have keys that sit in jars or drawers, or hang on hooks behind doors. But rarely if ever do we see them all together, hanging in a giant key chain.
It is this relatability, the universality of experience, that Lebovitch draws on in his series Home Sweet Home, a touring exhibition and book that takes the banality of life and layers it with wit, humour and a dash of the absurd.
He says the inspiration for the series was equally banal. “One day when I tried to hang a picture on the wall one of the nails bent and when I pulled it out it left a big hole. To cover the hole I had to move the picture from the original spot I’d chosen. That made me think about all those things we do at home that are a bit odd and that was the beginning of the project”.
In Home Sweet Home Lebovitch moves beyond the idea of capturing reality, preferring to distort and exaggerate with the theatricality of his photographs carefully orchestrated. Humour underpins many scenarios, some of which border on the surreal. For example, there is the photograph of a man sitting on the end of a bed wrapped like a mummy in toilet paper; and then there is a woman eating from a massive pile of spaghetti, which swims across the kitchen bench, its tendrils dripping over the edge.
“I make a lot of mess at home and I have to clean it up,” laughs Lebovitch who began the project nine years ago when his twin sons were born. No longer free to indulge in the street photography he loved, he turned his camera inside to photograph what was going on in his own home.
To emphasise the mess making, Lebovitch refers to a double page spread in the book. On one side is a full block of butter sitting on a plate. On the opposite page the block of butter is now a puddle running onto the table. Then there is the indoor pot plant sitting on the floor minus its pot, the soil spilling across an otherwise ordered surface. Holes are cut in carpets, nails are hammered into walls, and a television is encased in cling wrap. At the base of a toilet a garden grows, the brown of the dirt in stark contrast to the white porcelain and the tiled floor.
Lebovitch also draws on the theatre of the absurd, which is obvious in images such as the picture where a woman stands with her hands in a toaster. “My wife is always cold, so she is warming up her hands,” he laughs, adding that this isn’t something you should try at home!
And then there are images with a slightly darker undertone such as the photograph of a severed finger lying in a pool of blood on a kitchen chopping board, a wedding band still attached, the knife in plain view. Is the image representative of an accident? Or a bloody divorce? As with many of Lebovitch’s pictures, it is for viewers to bring their own imagination and experiences to the reading.
As American curator Crista Dix says in her essay in the book, “It is the element of whimsy, of satire, and of the narrative of the absurd that makes this series worth looking at over and over, finding nuance and innuendo in each image”.
Alison Stieven-Taylor
Alison Stieven-Taylor is a writer specializing in photography based in Melbourne, Australia.
Rubi Lebovitch, Home Sweet Home
Until 7 October 2017
Praza Maior, 16
27001 Lugo
Spain
Book available from: www.rubilebovitch.com
