A big hello from China: Shaan Khan brings the Far East to La Brioche
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By Anne Galloway Times Argus Staff - Published: January 5, 2007
Shaan Khan's color photographs of China on view at La Brioche this month go beyond the typical travelogue. Noticeably absent in his exhibit are the usual gaga shots of rickshaw drivers, Buddhist temples or the Great Wall.
His digital images are quiet, even contemplative. And that's because Khan is no tourist: He has lived and worked in China for the last four years.
Even so, the 14 images on display in Montpelier's popular bakery and lunch spot are an outsider's view of this mysterious country. Khan evokes the exotic beauty of China, its inexorably harsh living conditions and the revolutionary economic changes that have transformed the sleeping dragon into an international powerhouse.
The title of the show, taken from the traditional Chinese hello, "Ni chi le me?" (literal translation: Have you eaten yet?) is a sweet, understated introduction, and it provides an insight into Khan's sensitive treatment of his varied subject matter: still lifes, genre shots and portraits.
"The Perfect Dumpling," for example, a shot of a flour-dusted pastry, looks like a fish beached on a sandy beach. The flour is spread in grains like sand, and the dumpling rests in the middle of it, a plump form with a large dorsal fin. In the background, a pair of hands rest on the counter, some distance from the object they created.
In another image, a bride in a western wedding gown and veil and a groom in a white tux flirt on a beach as the surf roils up behind them. Khan says when he visited in Huandau, a number of couples were having their wedding photos taken in sentimental poses (such as drawing hearts with sticks in the sand) on Golden Beach.
Khan captures an eerie sunset in "Polluting Beauty." Two stolid concrete towers rise into the hazy apricot colored atmosphere of Beijing. The sunset takes on this bizarre hue on occasion because of the city's industrial pollution, Khan says.
The most remarkable photo in the series, a still life of two oranges, could have been taken anywhere. The oranges, with their green peels, sit on a white window sill. One is intact; the other has been partially peeled, revealing the succulent sections of fruit. The composition, color and sharpness of the image are nearly flawless.
Khan, who grew up in Montpelier, left the states in 2002, shortly after he graduated from Skidmore College with a bachelor's in English literature. And his journey to the Far East sounds like an introduction to a novel. He took a job teaching English at the University of Petroleum in Dongying, a small city (by Chinese standards) of 1 million in the Shandong Province. The only source of Western influence at the time was a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise restaurant. He taught for two years, and then took a job with the Modern English company in Beijing.
I reached him by phone at his family home in Montpelier this week. He happens to be graduating from Vermont College's masters in fine arts program in creative writing on Sunday. He returns to Beijing next week. Hopefully, with camera in hand.
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