Michael Rababy – Casinoland: Tired of Winning

Review by Melanie Chapman •

If Toulouse-Lautrec and Martin Parr had a baby, its name would be Casinoland: Tired of Winning. A dynamic collection of new color photographs by Michael Rababy, this publication from Kehrer Verlag focuses our gaze on the denizens of casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, and other illustrious locales, and offers such an intimate glimpse into the netherworld of gambling culture that you too may feel broke, hungover, and in need of fresh air.

Reflecting an admirable thirty-year commitment to a project, Rababy visited numerous casinos not as a gambler, but rather as an astute observer of some of the saddest and yet most colorful vignettes of Capitalism outgassing. Behold all the lonely people, eyes glazed over staring at slot machines they’ve poured their weekly wages into, overweight bodies melting over red vinyl stools while their hands clutch fists full of money so tight you’d think it was life itself. Dazzling smiles and oversized breasts compete for the attention of gamblers who seem uninterested in pleasures of the flesh; it is another form of stimulation they are addicted to.

We as viewers are fortunate that Rababy has willingly endured the heat, the cigarette smoke, the ceaseless assault of noise and blinking lights, and the apparently terrible food offerings, so that we don’t have to. Like the photographer Brassai and the painter Toulouse-Lautrec before him, Rababy is drawn to the more sordid and “colorful” versions of a night out on the town. Yet Rababy also brings a unique sense of dark humor to his brightly lit portraits, and the masterful editing of his images paired with text drawn from billboards and sales brochures succeeds in conveying the contradiction of what the gamblers hope for versus the reality of another losing streak that surely will be reversed with just one more quarter, one more drink…

Casinoland: Tired of Winning makes this reviewer recall a certain Actor’s drug-fueled and very public downward spiral in which he claimed to have tiger blood and wore a maniacal smile while he insisted, he was “Winning!!!” Likely some of the gamblers in Rababy’s sharply humorous photographs would also insist that they are winning, and if lounging by the pool in the brutal sun long enough to sober up and forget how much money they lost last night and will likely do again, then yes, these folks are truly winners.

Casinoland succeeds not just because of the subject matter. In addition to his gifted command of color, Rababy also demonstrates excellent timing and strong graphic sensibilities with each frame. It is a delight to imagine him moving throughout such hyper-stimulating environments and making stealth use of his camera or phone to create compelling (and sometimes depressing) works of art within the hallowed shrines of commerce. Within most casinos, every effort has been masterfully crafted to shut out any reminder of the outside world, one in which bills must be paid, children fed, reality attended to. However, as seen through Rababy’s talented eye, one can sense there is a price to be paid for those who succumb to the casino’s lure, and the beauty of his images make it hard to look away.

Both an artwork and a reference book of our modern times, Casinoland will be going on my shelf, next to the two other photobooks of Rababy’s that I am fortunate to own, and will appropriately live next to another well-observed book about the false promise of get rich quick culture, Atlantic City by Brian Rose. Both depressing and caustically funny, Casinoland is an ironic masterpiece bathed in pathos and saturated with compassion.

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The PhotoBook Journal previously featured a review of California Love – A Visual Mixtape, curated by Michael Rababy.

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Melanie Chapman, a Contributing Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer based in Southern California.

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Michael Rababy – Casinoland: Tired of Winning

Photographer: Michael Rababy (born in Ohio; resides in Southern California)

Texts: Simon Glickman, Mat Gleason

Designers: Michael Rababy and Kehrer Design (Laura Pecoroni)

Hardcover, stitched binding; 160 pages with 115 color images; 24.5 x 26 cm; printed and bound in Germany; ISBN 978-3-96900-164-6

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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.