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diversions
Alumna plays with
fire-breathers, freaks
By Christine Shin
On-line Forty-Niner
Gone are the days
when carnival barkers would shout, "Step right up! Meet
KoKo the Killer Klown, or let Serpentina bedazzle you with
her erotic charms and a 20-foot long albino boa constrictor."
Although sideshows
no longer flourish across the United States as they once did,
Cal State Long Beach alumna Liezel Rubin has forever documented
one of the last remaining circus sideshows in America: "The
Sideshow by the Sea," on New York's Coney Island.
Ruben's photo-documentary,
exhibited at Artistic Edge gallery on Fourth Street in Long
Beach, features an array of colorful characters, including
The Fire God and Eak, the illustrated man.
"I wanted
to document the last of the sideshows because I wanted to
make a statement that sideshows are a positive thing,"
Rubin said. "It created so many good things for the people
who participated. It created employment and it created a family
for them. It also helped create a sense of understanding about
abnormal people."
The collection
of grainy photos cover various aspects of sideshow life, from
on stage performing to the classic two-headed cow and various
pickled specimens of deformed creatures. At one end of the
gallery, a bed of nails rests on a pedestal. At the other
end, a straight jacket is flung over another pedestal.
In a small room
off to the side, a video monitor repeatedly plays a freak
show caught on tape in Rubin's own backyard. The show features
a topless ballerina and a dominatrix humiliating and inflicting
pain on a man strapped to a chair.
Mostly known around
Long Beach for her lesbian bondage style of erotic art, Rubin
has also branched out in other ways than just her latest sideshow
exhibit. She is also working on a "white trash"
series, in which she finds and photographs genuinely poor
whites and in their derelict environments.
The Sideshow exhibit
will run through May 12.
"I hope everyone
enjoys it and has a good time," Rubin said. "All
are welcome to come and see the colorful world of sideshow."
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