Concepts
Concept Outline:
To create an accurate evocation and the sense of place and time of workaday office environments: this is a time as it was experienced by the people who lived and worked there.
The photos centre on the private universes of the characters that would evolve to provide a balance with their working lives. The photographs are not about individual performances: they’re about relationships and feature an undertone of loneliness, desire and the potential hollowness of conformity. It also concerns the destruction of idealism and the drowning of individuality of mediocrity – the painful truth of ordinary existence.
Tom’s approach to the visuals was to establish a world of lines, predictability and subtle confinement and to bring a ‘timeless sense’ to the images, so the audience would not have a sense of when it was made. Many aspects of the office life hierarchy and mandate affected the shooting process. For instance, close-ups of the two workers were avoided due to the (fictional) organizations belief in collectivism, with Tom remarking, "You can't make a project about two guys who are in effect suffocating under a corporate umbrella and then isolate them with close-ups."
“It has to have a glossy, warm look with strong, high-key lighting: you can always see things clearly. An Idyllic Americana look and visual palette that is similar to the likes of Georges De La Tour and Caravaggio paintings” the photographer noted. Tom wanted to give the image a ‘patina, to remove the newness that will allow the imagery to have an emotional dimension, so in a way, the interiors express the emotional states of the characters’. The framing design was centered on an overwhelming work load - the employees were framed to underscore the enormity of their tasks and their implications.
In short, the images hope to communicate the corruption of innocence and the exposure of conformity against Tom’s fascination with American culture.
Additional Accreditation: Art Direction - Paul Jeffcoat and Julian Waterson.
“The future keeps telling us what the past was about. You make the past mean different things by the way you use the time that comes after”
Steve Bochco.
