Art review, published in The District Weekly, 2009.
Paul Shambroom began his career as a commericial photographer, snapping pics for corporate brochures. The work in his career-spanning "Picturing Power" exhibit still has the cool, professional sheen of top-drawer stock photography, but there is a probing intelligence and dark wit here as well. Shambroom's subjects - corporations, the military, the government - are institutions that hide behind images designed to make themselves seem bigger and more important than the rest of us, as if they're beyond the weakness and indecision of mere mortals. At a glance some of Shambroom's photography can look like the glossy propaganda of these institutions, but gaze deeper and you'll see a bunch of humans who have built themselves a great big miserable world and now struggle to figure out what the hell to do with it.
Shambroom's "Meetings" series captures various city councils across America, gathered behind long tables to scowl at us like we're the one who keeps pissing in that mailbox on 3rd and Ashwood. While there is plenty of variation in the times and places these photos were taken, certain grim commonalities do emerge. These are aging, chubbyish, mirthless folk. They remind you of people you see behind the counter at the DMV, the ones who have been on their feet for six hours and are in no mood for your crap. If these are the men and women who run your town, it suddenly makes sense why that pothole on your block never gets fixed.
His "Nuclear Weapons" series effectively contrasts the shiny, sci-fi surfaces of our nation's war machines with the pale, frail flesh of the guys who keep it all humming. The fate of the globe rests in the sweaty palms of the dorky guys you'd see grabbing breakfast at IHOP, and that's an idea that's somehow as reassuring as it is terrifying. The "Homeland Security" series looks at our national defense from an entirely different angle, depicting our fighting men in clunky and ill-fitting but weirdly pristine hazmat suits and riot gear, so that they simultaneously look like little boys playing dress-up and cyborg law-keepers from some grim, dystopic future. To up the surreality of it all, the outdoor backgrounds are lit to resemble the lush romantic scenes from aristocratic portraits from centuries ago. Picture Gainsborough's The Blue Boy with a gas mask and a bomb-sniffing robot.
But it's Shambroom's "Offices" series that will hit closest to home for many of us. It offers a sad but sometimes blackly comic take on the loneliness and broken dreams of cubicle culture. The workers themselves are only glimpsed here, but what we see of their stuff says volumes. There is the 30th birthday balloon, bobbing forlornly over the empty cubes. There is the plant struggling to soak up some sun through the tinted office windows. If these images sometimes resemble establishing shots from Office Space or The Office, remember that Shambroom took these photos in the waning days of the '80s. The fact that they still look so contemporary in 2009 serves as a grim reminder of just how little has really changed in the working world. From the beginnings of one Bush administration to the ass-end of another, employees are still trudging off to work with a Bad Case of the Mondays.
One untitled piece is particularly striking; we find ourselves beneath the conference table of a General Mills office in 1989, looking out across a vast expanse of homely brown carpet in an alien forest landscape of collosal table legs and gleaming swivel chair bases. It makes you think of being a little kid, making your own fun on a trip to your mom or dad's office. Perhaps, as you crawled around beneath the desks, you wondered how grown-ups could do this all day, sitting around reading reports, answering phones and being so quiet and boring. Perhaps you're still wondering.
