Boring Postcards
Ruben Le Noble, Greeting from Almere (2005)
Photographer Ruben le Noble grew up in Almere and takes his inspiration from this city and the region of Flevoland. He makes staged photographs that frequently feature himself as an extra.
In 2005, Le Noble created Groeten uit Almere (Greetings from Almere), a series of four postcards. Whereas these types of postcards normally show a city’s best side, Le Noble takes the way in which most Dutch people view the young polder city as a point of departure. He depicts Almere as a barren, uniform city without regional history in which there is not a single soul in sight, except for the photographer himself who occupies an inconspicuous spot. The series was inspired by the Boring Postcards from the fifties and sixties that were collected by British photographer Martin Parr and compiled in a booklet in the eighties.
However, Le Noble’s oeuvre is not characterised by a crusade against his hometown. Le Noble gives the criticism of Almere a humorous twist. After all, there’s nothing wrong with laughing about photographs. In his works, we see influences of Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Helmut Newton and Teun Hocks. As is the case with the work of Wall, Ruben’s pictures are staged and tell a story. The appearance of the artist in his photographs is a stylistic trick that is also employed by Sherman. When it comes to atmosphere, Ruben lets himself be inspired by Newton’s surrealist imagery; the people are in a space, but it is as if the space denies the existence of the person. Just as the works of Hock, Ruben’s creations contain a lot of humour.
Ruben le Noble studied at the Amsterdam Photo Academy and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. During his apprenticeship, he assisted Hans van der Meer in photographing European football fields. Although Van der Meer is a documentary photographer, he and Le Noble have a similar outlook on the organisation of the public space. They both focus their lens regularly on Holland’s compulsively ordered squares, parks and streets, which are in abundance in Flevoland as well.
Ruben Le Noble, Greetings from Almere
Ruben le Noble, 1976, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Groeten uit Almere (Greetings from Almere), 2005
series of four postcards
Acquisition 2006, Museum De Paviljoens
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