Fumigation Tents as Art

The photographer Randi Malkin Steinberger captured the ubiquitous, incongruously cheerful fumigation tents that cover unlucky houses fostering dry-wood termite infestations. Now, her images of these homes are collected in “No Circus,” a Ruschaean portrait of the particular strangeness of Los Angeles and its suburbs.

Resembling lumpen carnival tents or sinister birthday gifts, the tented houses are bright and menacing all at once — a neon lure to a fanciful haunted house, pumped full of poison and poised to be unwrapped. Steinberger’s images present these buildings as enigmatic sculptures, each one a disquieting presence more or less ignored by locals. The images fit snugly in the tradition of looking at the sun-stroked Southern California landscape as an alien terrain.

From “A Bizarre, California Rite of Passage in Photos” by Max Lakin for The New York Times, 2016; Photo by Randi Malkin Steinberger

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