Ron Rubenstein // State of the World Visual Address #4

A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.

The 4th one is by Ron Rubenstein. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. RR is a bit of an enigmatic character who takes the shots none of us do. He hails from the US and has a tv personality president. Not sure where you go to catch RR these days - last I saw, he was on IG. But I cannot confirm that as I deleted my account. It seems to be that people who lend their artworks to AB, do not post a lot of other places. If you want to see something really lush by RR go here (these are some of my favorite photographies in existence).

Ron Rubenstein // The Pacific

Text: Zaar Riisberg

It's like he shoots from a forgotten era, a likeable, sometimes rural and gritty US I personally would like to visit. The best things, are things you cannot explain why you dig. Half the time I can not pinpoint what it is - I feel thrown back to the era of Dennis Stock. Something classic or other - Ron makes seemingly dead things into live poetry. A torn inner curtain and a certain light, bam, that's a Rubenstein. I see a lot of my peers going for the same style shots, and never moving out of their comfort zone - some of them hugely talented visually, but they keep delivering variations of the same aesthetic. Ron has always been a barrage, but over the years, the frequency of stellar work has increased - and Ron is, for me, at least, one of the best. And he has the name - he already has the fucking name...

The Shot itself

Some would probably thumb over this, others would scratch their head and wonder what the fuck I am on about. They have no sense of mood. This shot has - from the crooked mid line, to the two worlds apart, to the magnificent geometry playing itself out in the entirety of the shot, with more shades of grey, than a mere fifty. Crafty. But the mood? A long lost James Dean outtake with him not in frame, perhaps? Something lingers, you get the sense, that something invisible or out of frame, is unable, or does not want to leave. And maybe, that is a good thing. Moving on, is always preferable, but not to soon.