Paul Shambroom's American Photographs

Paul Shambroom’s American Photographs features projects from the artist’s four decades of exploring America’s cultural, political, and military landscapes. Taking on the most consequential subjects and powerful institutions from the humble perspective of an unaffiliated wandering “guy with a camera” as he describes himself, Shambroom has been consistent in questioning rather than explaining, witnessing rather than judging. His most recent projects exploring the nation’s political upheaval since 2016, Purpletown and Past Time, will be exhibited here for the first time. There are also selections from his earlier series Nuclear Weapons, Meetings, Security, and others.  Photographs from Portrait of Hennepin Avenue, made in 1979 in a street corner pop-up studio, will be shown for the first time in 40 years.

Shambroom’s projects based on found images and objects will also be on view. He regards his photographic work as inherently part of a basic human impulse to collect. Squares is an installation featuring a custom kinetic projection device displaying a collection of abandoned snapshots made by unknown photographers in 1976. Works from Lost are derived from weather damaged flyers posted by owners searching for missing pets. 67 Booths includes swag, booth photos and business cards from defense industry trade shows.

After working exclusively on large-scale projects for many years with his “big boy camera” as he calls it, Shambroom embraced phone photography on the Instagram platform in 2014. He considers this an equally serious photographic pursuit that is not constrained by project or formal parameters. The exhibition features a stream of his favorites on a monitor – the native format for this medium. An additional monitor will highlight selections from “Messed-Up Paul,” a beloved recurring assignment where students are challenged to produce the most humiliating and humorous alterations of Paul’s face using Photoshop and, most recently, AI technologies.

Artist Biography
Paul Shambroom has published four monographs, Purpletown (2024), Past Time: Troubled Visions of the Good Old Days (2020), Meetings (2004), and Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality After the Cold War (2003). Paul Shambroom: Picturing Power (2008) was published to accompany the traveling exhibition organized by the Weisman Art Museum. Shambroom has received grants and fellowships from the Bush Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Minnesota State Arts Board, among others. His work is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and Walker Art Center. His teaching career spans the University of Minnesota, Carleton College, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Gallery Hours and Access
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.
The Regis Center for Art is accessible by U-Card only. Please call 612-624-7530 upon arrival to gain entrance to the galleries through the building’s main entrance located on 21^st Avenue South, directly across from the parking garage.

Friday, January 24, 2025
7:00 - 9:00 pm Public Reception

Thursday, February 6, 2025
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Squares (found photos from 1976)
Participatory event with theater artist Aaron Landsman and former photo lab worker Tim Aune

Sponsorship
Paul Shambroom’s American Photographs is made possible with generous support provided by the Research & Innovation Office at the University of Minnesota through a Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry and Scholarship, the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts, and Metropolitan Picture Framing.

Related Exhibition: The Magnificent Seven: MFA Alumni

Image: (detail) Paul Shambroom, Albany, OR, -0.06% margin, 45 votes difference out of 27,567 total, 2023, from the Purpletown series, Pigmented inkjet on paper, 24 x 30 in.