My favorite object in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition “Power of the People: Art and Democracy” is Paul Shambroom’s Maurice, Louisiana (Population 642) Village Council, May 15, 2002 (shown above).

This large exhibition presents works from ancient Athens to contemporary America, including some famous and powerful objects. In this context, Shambroom dignifies democracy as the rule of regular people. (His photograph is also the favorite of Boston Globe critic Mark Feeney.)

Shambroom’s village councilors are middle-aged Americans in mostly casual clothes, including polo shirts for the two men. They all seem to be listening to the speaker at the right–three of them watching her face, one staring attentively into the distance.

The flags and seal behind them convey authority. These people represent the state, which ultimately wields the power of life and death. (Compare the empty juror chairs in Jim Dow’s eloquent photo, “Grady County Courthouse, Jury Box, Cairo, Georgia, 1976,” also in the exhibition.) But the councilors are not evidently bossing anyone around. They are probably trying to decide whether a proposed building conforms to the city plan.

The councilors occupy a dais that sets them apart from any constituents who might attend, whether to petition them or to oversee their work. The woman at the center, presumably the council chair, is raised higher, and she seems to be listening with mild amusement.

The large scale of the photograph (33 x 66 in) makes it monumental, in the tradition of public history painting. In fact, the exhibition invites a comparison to “The Magnanimity of Lycurgus” (1791), a large and histrionic oil painting by Jean-Jacques François Le Barbier, which was made for the Paris Salon at the height of the Revolution. Shambroom’s photo suggests that representative Americans deserve the same kind of recognition as the Lawgiver of Sparta.

Shamboom has made many such images. Compare Wadley, Georgia (population 2,468), City Council, August 13, 2001, which is in the Whitney.

The word “populism” is being used today mainly to criticize political ideologies that posit that the true people of any given country form a homogeneous and intolerant bloc. The people have enemies–domestic and foreign–and can be led by a single, charismatic figure. For me, Shambroom’s city council images are quiet statements of a different form of populism. Here, the people are diverse and deliberative, and they merit the right to do the unglamorous and endless work of self-government.