KPCC's John Rabe art exhibit on display May 26-June 22 in LA

They were boxy, drab, and cheaply made, yet we brought millions of them into our homes. They were possibly the ugliest appliance ever designed, but we gave them pride of place in our living rooms. They were the television sets of the 1980s and 1990s, the unsightly predecessors of the sleek flatscreens of the new millennium, and now they litter the LA landscape like burger wrappers.

John Rabe, known for hosting 89.3-KPCC's award-winning Off-Ramp news and arts magazine show, documents their demise in an evocative new photo exhibit, The Vast Wasteland Project. It's on display at Bermudez Projects from May 26 – June 22 in downtown Los Angeles. A public reception will be held Saturday, June 4, noon – 3PM.

"It all started a couple years ago in my slightly sketchy neighborhood," Rabe says. "Every day, I saw more and more abandoned sets left on the curb, from little portables to huge projection televisions. Bulky item pickup junk is nothing new in Cypress Park, but I was compelled to photograph them, to tell this minor-key story."

These were the sets that brought us Miami Vice, Judge Wapner, and Jerry Springer; the Clinton impeachment, Tanya Harding, and OJ's slow-speed chase. "Now," Rabe says, "We've kicked them to the curb. Maybe it's justice ... payback for their unfulfilled programming promise."

Rabe photographs the sets using the Hipstamatic® i-Phone app, which produces a sort of digital Polaroid. This gives Rabe’s photos a retro, dreamy quality. "When digital cameras first came out," Rabe says, "I loved that they captured every detail, in clear focus. But the more I shot, the more I realized digital cameras show too much. The Hipstamatic app solves that problem. It narrows the focus and echoes the mix of nostalgia and melancholy I feel when I see these once-proud possessions -- rightfully, I'm afraid -- tossed out on their ears. They were crappy, but so many people loved the crap they showed."

The Vast Wasteland Project's title is a nod to one of the most famous speeches of the Twentieth Century, in which Newton Minow, the fresh new head of the FCC, excoriated television executives for their violent, intellectually insulting, and boring programming. He told them if they actually watched their own station's programming for a day, "what you will observe is a vast wasteland." Like Rabe, Minow also lamented TV’s lost potential. “When television is good,” Minow said in the speech, “nothing -- not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers -- nothing is better.” The Vast Wasteland speech was delivered exactly fifty years ago this month. Rabe says, “What began as a metaphor for programming has become a physical reality in LA's streets and alleys."

The Vast Wasteland Project exhibit includes over 30 framed and printed photos, plus audio of Minow's speech and Rabe's exclusive interview with Minow, now 85, from his office in Chicago.
John Rabe is an award-winning radio host and producer who has lived in Los Angeles for eleven years. At age 12 he snapped a shot of the I-500 Snowmobile Race in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan that wound up on the front page of the Detroit News. He’s been photographing the world ever since.

Bermudez Projects is at 117 W. 9th Street, Space 810, Los Angeles, California 90015.