Randi Malkin Steinberger: No Circus - Hardcover

by Randi Steinberger (Artist), D. J. Waldie (Contribution by)

No Circus brings together photographs by Los Angeles-based Randi Malkin Steinberger (born 1960) of buildings tented for termite fumigation around Los Angeles. After moving to the city in the early '90s, she encountered these shrouded structures and began to stop and photograph them, knowing that the tent might be undraped at any given moment.

Steinberger was intrigued by the way the colors and shapes of the tents showed off the forms below and highlighted the beauty of the poor plants on the outside, still flourishing, unaware that they were slowly being poisoned. Beyond the intended purpose of fumigation, these tents unwittingly allow us to stop and contemplate not only architectural form and the meaning of home, but also the Southern California lifestyle more broadly.