Home Sweet Home

• Photographer
  Rubi Lebovitch, Israel

My photographs deal with domestic scenes captured in straightforward
images. The scenes can be divided in to two main categories:
inanimate objects and human scenarios. Both categories are
characterized by mystery, vagueness and absurdity. I create a twist in
familiar sights and build new contexts, thus endowing the scene with
new meaning. Mundane objects and domestic spaces are transformed
into something strange and surprising. Like in surreal paintings, a new
and impossible reality is created.
At times, my photographs can be seen as an illusion of the Theatre of
the Absurd, an illustration which takes place in the house. My images
do not contain a clear-cut story or plot. The characters are inscrutable
to the viewers and difficult to identify; their relationship with the world
around them is senseless and they fail to communicate. Rationality is
substituted by a twisted and exaggerated worldview. I employ
multiplicity of objects, allowing the objects to grow stronger and take
over reality; they occupy and control the space. In most of the
photographs, the focus is on the objects, as such, they become the
center of power, emphasizing loneliness and emptiness.
The restlessness characterizing my work is connected to Freud's
concept of the Uncanny, which locates the origins of horror in the
homely and familiar. The scenes depicted in the photographs
emphasize what usually remains hidden: the repressed, which cannot
be described. The anxiety these scenes arouse undermines the
peacefulness and security usually associated with home.