Wires, water coolers, off-white walls: 90s office portraits

AuthorOscar Holland, CNN

So when many are wondering if they need an office, the archived images of the American workplace by photographer Steven Ahlgren remind us of the not-so-distant past.

Photos taken over 11 years give a glimpse into corporate life in the 1990s and early 2000s. Ahlgren secured invitations to law firms, accounting firms, government agencies and commercial banks using a photo-taking gig for business networking events.

While there, he occupied an office with a maze of boxed computers, fax machines, and cables that tells of the technological changes that have taken place over the last two decades. But the photographer's images are also strangely intimate, with employees staring at documents, talking to desk phones, and attending meetings under fluorescent lights.

"I would tell them,'I'll just do whatever you normally do and I'll see and take some pictures,'" he said at his home in the Pennsylvania media. Said in a video call. "I was just sitting and looking."

Ahlgren was, after all, able to relate to his subject. Before he became a professional photographer, he was a bunker. In particular, a young man standing on a Xerox machine saw himself burying his hand deep in his pocket and appearing to have lost his thoughts.

"It's very close to the self-portraits I've made so far," Ahlgren said. "I think it looked exactly like that when I was working at the bank.

" I felt a bit bitter and wasted time since the years I spent at the bank, "he adds. I did. When I started (the project), I thought, "Like me, people are wasting their lives." But then I really started to sympathize with them. They may have loved their work.

Indeed, looking through today's lenses, the seemingly monotonous scenes, as we knew, provide a compelling example of death in the office. Playful ties, cubicle decorations, framed artwork, etc. are rarely interrupted by flashing colors.

However, for many people, images are nostalgic. What's more, hidden in beige is a depiction of success and fulfillment. As an example, .Ahlgren provided images of two harsh-faced women sitting under nearly twelve portraits of a man in a commercial bank. The American company's "Old Man Network"

"Audience, whatever you take from it," he said of his series. About that particular time.

Create tension

Ahlgren's past companies alone No source of inspiration. He was also influenced by Edward Hopper's oil painting "Office at Night". His 1940 work depicts a man in a suit behind a desk and a young woman in a filing cabinet beside him, calling on viewers to speculate on a possible relationship between the two. I am.

Ahlgren, increasingly bored with his work as a banker in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the 1980s, regularly visits the nearby Walker Art Center, where his paintings are usually stored. I was surprised.

"It just scratched me, and I kept coming back to it." He said about Hopper's artwork. "What I got was the idea that it was a very straightforward, pedestrianized everyday situation, and it was harder to think of such a thing than an average office. It made it dramatic. In some way to fill the tension of the story. "

Use of Ahlgren in hopper-like lighting to spotlight a lonely subject and cast stimulating geometric shadows. Was not entirely by design. However, the painter's influence is also evident in the quiet strength and poetic ambiguity of the shot, where employees are often captured alone or interact with invisible or obscure faces.

Still, Ahlgren has nostalgic memories of his old office in Minneapolis. I remembered. And while the pandemic set an ideal time to revisit the series, criticizing corporate life was "not the intention of photography."

He is also not convinced that the "office-wide dilemma" caused by the pandemic means the end of the physical workplace.

"I find it hard to work from home," Ahlgren said. "I saw my daughters and wife in college working from home. That would make me crazy." Published by Hoxton Minipress