Beginning 1982, Steven Rubin hitchhiked into Maine’s poor, rural Somerset County to document folks there in the manner of classic black and white documentary photography. Now on view at Los Angeles’s Drkrm gallery, Rubin drives makes clear his take by sardonically naming the series after the motto on the state’s license plates: “Vacationland.”
At first glance, the intimate photos—primarily from the ‘80s and ‘90s, with some from the past decade—appear gritty and grim. Grimmer, I expect if you’re not familiar with rural Maine. But familiarity can also foster tolerance of lousy conditions, so it can be helpful to see things presented so starkly.
At times though Rubin, who’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic and is now an assistant professor at Penn State University, does seem to stack the deck. One photo seems a self-conscious update of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” And there’s sad, bleak humor in a photo of a baby in the backseat of a car drinking from a bottle next to his bristly bearded great uncle clutching his own bottle of Budweiser.
But there’s a flinty warmth here too amongst family members gathered around a kitchen table or a man cradling a Doberman puppy or a girl and her uncle (clutching a can of Budweiser) riding in the breezy back of a pickup to the summer swimming hole.
Steven Rubin “Vacationland,” Drkrm, 727 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, California, April 28 to May 26, 2012.
Pictured at top: “Grandma Rosie’s kitchen,” 1983.
“Donny’s girl in the kitchen,” 1982.
“Eyeing a chainsaw that won’t start,” 1982.
“Merton and Meryl and their Dobermans,” 1990.
“Ernie tinkering,” 1983.
“Sanford eyes his cousin’s deer,” 1982.
“Tracy and her cat,” 1991.
“Liza and Uncle Kendall on the way to the swimming hole,” 1990.
“Bubba and his Great-Uncle ‘Six-Pack’ Sammy” 1990.
The great hand-painted signs on Woody’s Tire Service in Everett, Massachusetts, as photographed by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research.
