PHOTOGRAPHER HOPES HIS DISASTER BILLBOARDS RESONATE
OROVILLE » Commercial photographer Thomas Broening wants his new photography exhibit to illicit a reaction, even if it’s a negative one.
Six days ago, Broening’s photographs found their way onto six billboards located around Oroville. The photographs depict three crises affecting California: drought, wildfires and homelessness. The photographs do not have any text, calls to action or political messages on them. They are simply visual reminders of the challenges Californians face for people to spot walking or driving by.
The billboards will remain in Oroville until June 12, when they will then be transferred to Oakland, which is where Broening lives, and the city which inspired one of his photos, which depicts
homeless people in tents underneath a freeway overpass.
“These things affect the whole state,” Broening says. “My goal is not to solve housing or climate change. I’m remaining neutral.”
Broening said these disasters create such a discrepancy, given that California is such a rich state, and part of the United States, which is a very wealthy country.
Broening has been taking photos since he was 16. He worked as a photojournalist and has taken photographs for national magazines. He has shot photos of Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, basketball player LeBron James and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, but he now does commercial photography.
“This is something that I can do,” he said about his Oroville exhibit. “Photography is something I really know how to do.”
Broening, who has lives in California for 33 years, paid for the billboard space out of his own pocket, which he said was quite expensive.
So far, the reaction from people who have seen the photos has been less than positive.
“People say the photos are
ugly, and why would someone do this?” he said, but he is happy to have any reactions to the photographs because it shows people are paying attention.
The photographs were taken in Oroville, Berkeley, Oakland, Lake Sonoma,
Shasta and Indian Falls.
“I want this to be recognized as a statewide problem,” Broening said. “Fires don’t care where you live, they don’t discriminate.”
The billboard depicting a convertible car on fire is powerful since Broening says convertibles represent “freedom and driving down Highway 1,” and it’s difficult to see it on fire.
Broening says the Lake Oroville picture, which depicts drought, is his favorite. “Everything I’m trying to say is in the photograph,” he said. “It’s strange and beautiful and devastating all at the same time.”
Even though the photographs depict sad situations, Broening managed to capture beauty in them. In one of the homeless camp photos, he got a shot of a massive teddy bear resting on top of a shopping cart, and in one of the pictures depicting a house and cars on fire, he got a shot of a windmill in the center of the photograph.
Some of the billboard pictures can have double meanings, such as the photograph depicting a burned out tree, which can represent both drought and wildfire. “It can connect two or three crises at the same time,” he said.
Oroville was chosen as a photography setting because Broening has spent time in Oroville, and has sent his daughters to summer camp there.
After Oakland, the pictures will be displayed on billboards in Southern California. Usually, the goal of billboards is to advertise an event, or sell a product, but Broening’s billboards are erected to educate.
“I don’t want people to look away,” he said. “I don’t want them to just pass by.” Broening’s goal was also to have his story told in local media before the national media possibly gets ahold of it.
He took a couple hundred rolls of film, ending up with hundreds of photographs, before choosing the photographs that ended up on the billboards.
Broening’s father worked for the Associated Press and Broening says his journalistic skills and love of photography was handed down to him from his father. This exhibit is Broening’s baby, and what he will focus on for the foreseeable future.
The billboards can be found on Ophir Road, Lincoln Street, Oro Dam Boulevard West, Oro Dam Boulevard and Highway 162, Fifth Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard.