Office / Kontor
Lars Tunbjörk
Lars Tunbjörk (1956 – 2015) was a Swedish photographer known for his deadpan portraits of office space and suburban lifestyles. His iconic photobook of corporate melancholy, Office, was first published in 2001. The first edition quickly sold out. Loose Joints re-published in 2024 a new version, with a second related volume of LA offices from later year added.
Over five years Lars Tunbjörk explored offices across Stockholm, New York and Tokyo. The nerve centres of banks, computer companies, stockbrokers and law firms. Tunbjörk started photographing offices in Sweden. But with expanding globalization he felt it restrictive to visit Swedish offices only. So he sought out places of international trade in Tokyo and New York. It is a truly international culture. The end result of globalization and, apart from the odd local detail, these spaces are almost totally interchangeable. Even in their colour schemes, or, rather, non-colour schemes, for white and grey predominate. All must be neutral and calm, the workers must not get excited.
The office is one of our most common workplaces. Photographically, working life is often depicted in visually and emotionally charged settings. Building on Lewis Hine’s Men At Work, one of the first photobooks about men working. And in which workers constructing the Empire State Building in New York are depicted as heroes. Middleclass life however fails to attract most photographers and thus has been documented very little.
The easy thing to say is that these environments are soulless. But these are places designed for work, not for spirituality. All the spaces are designed for efficiency. The most difficult to tame however are the workers. They break the sterility of the spaces. Wires proliferate and try to trap the workers. In this hostile environment people try to perform their tasks related to their bullshit jobs.
These spaces, largely open-plan, are only one aspect of the contemporary office story. The workstations shown are mostly those of the middle-rank executives. Go to the spaces of the higher executives (one to a room) and you find a different aesthetic at work, more individualistic and often more nostalgic in tone. With fine paintings, antique furniture, wood panelling and so on. Tunbjörk is certainly demonstrating globalization, a horizontal levelling-out across continents. But the old class system, the differences between owners and workers, although a lot more flexible these days, still remains firmly in place.
Office / Kontor
Photographer: Lars Tunbjörk
First published in 2001 by Journal
Landscaped debossed hardcover with tip-on
29 x 27,5 cm, 112 pages, 79 color images
Re-published in 2024 by Loose Joints
Mentioned in The Photobook. A History. Volume 2. Edited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger.