Theory: August 2007 Archives

Matt Niebuhr has written a great post about how photographers approach their work, inspired by the Paolo Ventura interview I posted about last week. He compares Ventura's pint-sized war dioramas to Paul Shambroom's photographs of anti-terror training scenarios being held in the New Mexico desert. Shambroom's lighting and posing makes these life-sized emergency workers appear as action figures, an inversion of Ventura's approach.

The Playas, NM, training center where Shambroom made his pictures, referred to as "Terror Town", is an interesting phenomena brought about as a response to 9/11. The town was basically deserted after the departure of it's primary employer and then was bought up and turned into a training center for first-responders and anti-terrorist security organizations. The view from Google Maps makes appear to be a Southern California suburb dropped out of the sky near the New Mexico border. The take-over has some ominous tones, however, as there are still some scatter residents in the town who are now, paradoxically, held hostage in their homes when exercises are taking place.