Customer Reviews

Paul Shambroom: Meetings

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It's hard to imagine now, but the term participatory democracy didn't originate in a well-funded liberal think tank; it came from SDS, students for a democratic society. SDS is also the source for my favorite description of democracy: "Democracy," wrote an anonymous SDS member, "is an endless meeting." It seems like a fairly logical extension of the democratic ideal: more participation means more discussion and-whether it's in the hallway or the Capitol Building-more discussions mean more meetings. Eventually, you get to all meetings, all the time. Pure democracy.

Paul Shambroom's book "Meetings" is a collection of photographs about democracy, made at town meetings of various types and sizes all across these United States. In Shambroom's book, democracy is more participatory than centralized, but it still boils down to several individuals who have taken on the responsibility of representing their fellow citizens. What this act of representation amounts to is going to meetings and undertaking the basic activities of democracy:listening or talking or more importantly, just finishing one or the other. Shambroom revels in these moments, the brief spaces during which the civic becomes the governmental and discussion becomes decision. Keeping faith with the process, Shambroom finds dignity in gesture and posture, no matter the locale or topic.

Even though an agenda for each meeting is reproduced in the back of the book, we don't need to know the issues being discussed. The fact is: Every issue is important in these photographs. Every person is important in these photographs. That's because Shambroom is less interested in transcribing the specifics of a meeting than he is in representing the nagging contradiction at democracy's core. Just like democracy, each of Shambroom's photographs somehow preserves the agency of the individual participants while maintaining the dynamic integrity of the group. Shambroom doesn't try to explain it; depicting it is hard enough.

In visual terms, Shambroom's panoramas of citizens suggest the narrative structure of the Elgin (Athenian) marbles, while fortifying the elegant horizontal rectangularity of democratic discussion (as opposed to pyramidal hierarchical structures). The color is even and the lighting is low drama. That's ok for Shambroom, who is more interested in the calm and practicality of local meetings than in the spectacle of red and blue. As a description of the country in which we live, Meetings stands in stark contrast to the brutish media-and-money driven venality of Beltway partisanship. Shambroom speaks truth to this power, not by photographing meetings, but by choosing to represent what is true and lasting and crucial about American democracy.

Who would have thought that photos of a bunch of local worthies sitting round a table could be so fascinating? Shambroom's inspired idea was to capture the bottom layer of the democratic process, the one that intimately affects the everyday activities of most of us. The people in these photos control civic work that makes life pleasant for millions of Americans. The beauty of the system is that if your life isn't as pleasant as you think it should be you can say so and put yourself forward to get elected and try things your way.

The forty meetings in the book are a selection of the 150 Shambroom photographed between 1999 and 2003, mostly in small towns with a few from large metro areas. Plate twenty-nine shows the Community Board of Manhattan District 7 (population over 200,000) sitting in an appropriately stately room with large portraits behind them and at the other extreme is plate thirteen showing the five team City Council of Berkley, Iowa (population 24) sitting round a table in the classroom of a local school.

The large format straight on photos capture the moment at these meetings, mostly everyone looks very serious (bored even?) and away from the camera. They are talking amongst themselves or listening to someone speaking away from Shambroom's camera. For such a simple shot there is a huge amount of detail to take in, the people, tables with papers, office furniture, walls with maps, paintings, flags and more. I thought it interesting that in so many of these meetings each person had a nameplate in front of them. Real people doing their civic duty.

There is however another element to this title that I think lifts it way above the usual photographer's photobook. Shambroom had the brilliant idea of including the minutes of the meetings he photographed. They follow on from the plates, printed on very thin paper and you can read what was said by the folks you've just looked at. For example, the minutes (August 1999) for the Board of Selectmen for Woodstock, Maine have Vern (the Town Manager) reporting that Ed Haskell had given a price of $10,500 to install a hot water heating system in the library. It was accepted and the work would begin soon. Turn to plate nineteen and there is Vern Maxfield sitting on the right of the table.

Shambroom, with his photos, has raised the mundane civic meeting to another level and with the addition of the minutes this book becomes alive and captures the very essence of democracy.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.