Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality after the Cold War
"Shambroom's images embody a personal vision informed by an extraordinary eye. He combines dogged research with a subtle dread of what he is beholding, an openness to the improbable and a cool ability to snatch art from the jaws of restricted access... The value of Face to Face with the Bomb lies in the wealth of its data, the power and order of its images, and the timing of its release... Shambroom's book arrives as our country inaugurates a new kind of endless war." -- Robert Del Tredici, Los Angeles Times Book Review"What do what weapons of mass destruction look like? Until Paul Shambroom published the remarkable photographs gathered in his new book Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality after the Cold War', those of us not personally connected with their manufacture, storage, and maintenance could only speculate on the basis of such antique models as 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy,' the bombs that eradicated Hiroshima in 1945... Everything more recent was contained somewhere in the depths of vast and remote military bases, protected not only by main force but by taboo... The most jarring thing in these photographs are the periodic reminders that what your are actually looking at bears some relation to violence, to the long history of combat using blunt or edged weapons." -- Luc Sante, Boston Globe"Paul Shambroom's Face to Face with the Bomb richly deserves the much abused adjective 'unique.' With tenacity and chutzpah, Shambroom got okays from the Defense Department to visit nuclear-weapons sites and to photograph what he saw. No one else has done that; and in today's hyper-tense climate, it is unlikely to happen again. Shambroom neither praises nor condemns America's nuclear deterrent. His purpose was to demystify, to reveal the unseen. Openness, he reasoned, is the American way. The result is a one-of-a-kind artifact of the Cold War." -- Mike MooreSenior, Editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists"Paul Shambroom's Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality after the Cold War explores this unreal conjunction of everyday and the epic." -- Albert Mobilio, Bookforum"Face to Face with the Bomb is a compulsively fascinating account, through words and pictures, of the state of America's nuclear force today." -- Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times-Post Intelligencer"Grappling with the reality of all the nuclear bombs out there is just what photographer Paul Shambroom wants us to do... Some of his images evoke awe, showing that he has a good sense of the magnitude of the enterprise he is trying to document. Others are just plain funny, demonstrating that he also has a good sense of humor." -- American Scientist"Mr. Shambroom's approach suggests an anthropologist's method and rigor." -- Philip Gefter, New York Times