Once the cradle of China’s petroleum industry, the town of Yumen in Gansu Province is a now a rundown backwater town, perpetually shrouded in pollution and overrun with shuttered storefronts and disgruntled workers. When Zhuang Hui and his girlfriend Dan’er decided to open a photography studio here in 2007, 35 percent of the population was unemployed, with 14,000 living in poverty and 6,000 on social welfare.

Imagine, then, the shock of encountering the smiling faces of children, of women in wedding gowns and men in their Sunday best, staring out from stock backgrounds of river valleys, seasides and blurry dreamscapes in Yumen, 2006-2009.

All of the photos on display at this exhibition are of paying customers to the Yumen Family Photo Studio, from those after mug shots for ID cards to folks who just wanted a picture of themselves in something nice.

There is nothing artistic about these pictures, but the effect is stunning. You can’t help searching for hidden calluses and wondering what future they could possibly be dreaming for themselves.

This fantasy world is abruptly disputed in the back room of the gallery where four projectors display pictures of Yumen stripped to its bare economic reality: drywalls without roofs, windowless buildings, rusted pipes, deserted streets, smokestacks and blackened puddles of rainwater.

Peering back at the smiling faces, you’re tempted to ask, “What can be done?” It is then that the real cost of this country’s economic boom becomes painfully clear.

*At the Three Shadows Photography Art Center

By Anthony Tao