Did you always know you wanted to be a creative and a photographer?

SHAN: No, I actually spent most of my life playing basketball. So I’ve played basketball professionally and that was like, what I did in the world, and as an athlete you don’t get to split your time between different disciplines or different careers if you’re an athlete. Your sport is your life, so I spent most of my time playing basketball and then sometimes when I had off time, like my first year off from college I played around with cameras when I worked at Best Buy. So there were points in my life where cameras and photography was a part of that moment but it wasn’t something I was pursuing full time. I took my first photograph when I was eight, and then I think I took my next photographs in like 2010 when I met one of my friends who was a photographer, and he inspired me to be a photographer. I feel like that was my first time having a photography community with him, but then from there I just kept playing basketball, so I just dabbled with it in and out. Then I started doing a lot of entertainment photography, cause I worked at Sirius XM, then I used to work for Rams Head Live, so I did a lot of concert and entertainment photography. So throughout the entire decade that I’ve been a photographer, I dabbled in different genres of photography. Just maybe five years ago is when I started to pursue art. I think five years ago was when I realized that I wanted to be an image maker, and that could be still photography, it could be moving frames. But I knew I wanted to be an image maker.

What is your process like when you’re working with people you photograph?

SHAN: My process for working with people looks different depending on the person, depending on the zipcode, depending on the city and the state, the country and the continent; it all looks different when I’m abroad. There’s a language barrier most times, like I’ve spent some time in Cuba, I don’t speak Spanish well, but I have photographs so I was able to communicate in some way. When I was in South Africa they spoke eleven languages, English being one, so there wasn’t much of a language barrier but it all depends. Here in Baltimore, sometimes it looks like me seeing a sitter, or a subject, and pursuing them, introducing myself, telling them what I do and that I wanna take their photograph. Sometimes I observe and then I photograph later, sometimes the photograph is the end result. There’s a lot of work that has to be done to get the image that I want, meaning I have to be able to communicate to people, talk to people to build that trust to meet them where they are. And I think that much of my work is a reflection of the interior work that I’ve done on myself and also the interior work that I’ve done to be able to communicate properly to people. So ideally, it looks like me being outside, walking the streets, observing, watching people, talking to people, confiding in people. Much of what I do is built on community and extending the relationship beyond just the photographic process. The process certainly varies if I’m shooting digital or film, it’s much slower with film, it’s more intuitive with film, it’s much more intentional with film because everything is manual. The film cameras that I use don’t have light meters and I don’t actually own one either so much of it is very slow, then with digital I can maybe make 20-100 images that I like in a day, so the process certainly varies.

How do you define your relationship with photography?

SHAN: My relationship with photography is a pretty strong balance and intimate, sometimes obsessive relationship. I know photography and art has been a life saver for me, it’s been able to get me out of some situations, it’s been able to educate me, take me to a place in my personhood that I’ve wanted to be. It’s allowed me to travel the world and be of service to Black people, which is a factor that’s in my natal chart, it’s a factor that’s a part of just who I am as a person, being able to be of service. I say it’s a “balance” relationship because I allow photography to teach me so much, and what it teaches me I like to reciprocate that as well. When I learn things, I work to teach my students that in photography. I also try to apply it to things that I learn into the lens, into the bodies of work that I make, so it’s a pretty balanced, loving, and intimate relationship. The work that I do is very spiritual, it is not material at all and so it goes beyond the material factors, instead it connects me to ancestors, it connects me to my people, it connects me to myself. Photography and art is really in line with what I wanna do for the rest of my life.