Paul Shambroom: Evidence of Democracy
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Shambroom’s 35 images at the Museum of Contemporary Photography include 8 others of town councils from his “Meetings” series and 26 from his “Nuclear Weapons” series. Born in New Jersey in 1956 and now living in Minneapolis, Shambroom writes in a statement that both series explore power and that the “Meetings” images are linked to the “long-standing artistic tradition of rendering the powerful,” which includes “European court painting, early American history painting, and the many versions of the Last Supper.”
The “Meetings” photographs are wide, echoing the proportions of the conference tables depicted, and have a painterly look because they’re ink-jet prints on canvas covered with varnish. Shambroom has also altered the photos digitally. Using available light and shooting with a four-by-five camera, he found that the long exposures occasionally resulted in a blurred figure, which he would sometimes replace with a sharper image of the same person from another photo. He also evened out any variations in color due to the different light sources and softened the backgrounds slightly to make the figures stand out in a manner reminiscent of Renaissance painters’ atmospheric perspective.
There’s something at once comforting and disturbing about a 1993 image of the debris from an unsuccessful Minuteman 1 missile test launch. Burnt and twisted metal lying in a road offers proof that fancy technology doesn’t always work. The skull-like shape of the debris also forms a contrast with the geometric “perfection” of the functional equipment in other photos. It’s as if Shambroom were capturing here a human quirk akin to the cocked head of a small-town politician.
