If you ever have a day so bad that you question your career choice, a look at Lars Tunbjork's Office might be all you need to thank your lucky stars and get on with it. A large selection of prints from the Swedish photographer's book of the same title is now on view at Cohen Amador Gallery.

At the opening last night, I toured the show with Tunbjork, who amid his busy schedule of editorial and corporate work has found time to produce a number of serious documentary projects, starting with A Country Beside Itself in 1993. His fifth book, Vinter (Winter) will be published this fall by Steidl.

Left to right: Civic Administration, Tokyo, 1996; Stock Brokerage, Tokyo, 1996; Post Office, Stockholm, 1988. All by Lars Tunbjork, courtesy of Cohen Amador Gallery.

My first question was "Why do an extended series about offices?" Tunbjork gestured towards a shimmering interior view of a nearly empty corner office. He told me he had shot this picture during a spare moment on corporate assignment. He tacked up the print in his studio and over time it grew on him. He began to think, "Although most people, at least in the West, spend the better part of their time in offices, nobody has ever really done a significant study of this environment."

Over the next several years, in the course of his assignment work, he began to take the photographs that make up this collection. While Tunbjork photographed all around the world - in Tokyo, Stockholm, New York, and Sioux Falls - the anonymity of the interiors, which share a sameness in colors and materials, suggest the immense workings of a universal corporate power.

The series begins with views of bland interior spaces that take on an iconic style through their quality of light and composition. Two businessmen stand before huge plate glass windows. The light from a celestial blue sky bathes the interior, as framed by the photographer in a highly structured angular composition, in an otherworldly glow. In another image that's a study in pure geometry, the regimental order of barren cubicles and overhead fluorescent fixtures reveals a human presence through a few straggly philodendron vines draped over a partition.

The human condition is revealed in scenes that show the ways in which people attempt to accommodate themselves to unforgiving spaces and conditions, often to humorous effect. In a Stockholm post office, a worker resting on an inclined plane relieves shoulder stress by using a weight machine built into the ceiling. In a New York law office, attorneys preparing paperwork for a corporate merger work on mountains of documents spread over every available surface including the floor under a conference table. In a Tokyo construction office, four men are engaged in stretching exercises, as if cued by a timer, while their colleague remains glued to his phone.

The 30 or so images on display offer plenty of food for thought, especially at a time when New York City is experiencing one of the biggest office building booms in its history.

Lars Tunbjork: Office continues through October 27, 2007
Cohen Amador Gallery, 41 East 57^th Street, 6^th floor, NY, NY