The cityscapes of Chinese metropolises like Shanghai change in the blink of an eye. Often, it happens so fast that we never get the chance to reflect on the consequences. In his abstract photo series Photosynthesis, Sean Hanratty creates a post-apocalyptic world featuring the juxtaposition between plants and elements of Shanghai’s concrete jungle. Dominic Ngai talks to him about the inspiration behind his work.
Photosynthesis, according to the Oxford Dictionary, refers to “the process by which green plants and other organisms use sunlight to synthesize nutrients from carbon dioxide and water.” It’s also the title of a photo series by American photographer Sean Hanratty – a project he started back in New York and continued to pursue when he moved to Shanghai in 2009.
“At the time, the photographs that came out of China – especially the ones that depicted the pace and scale of China’s development – blew my mind. I had to see it with my own eyes,” says Hanratty on his decision to move here six years ago. Since then, he’s been documenting the country’s unique people, architecture and objects through his lens.
“The Photosynthesis series stems from my time in grad school [at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where Hanratty earned his Master’s Degree in Photography],” he says. “Photography [has always been] a way for me to explore and interact with the world, so I’m always shooting.”
Hanratty’s love for documentaries, particularly on natural disasters, was the main inspiration behind the Photosynthesis series. “A few years ago, I was watching Life After People, a TV series about what would happen to the world if humans just suddenly vanished. What was intriguing to me was just how quickly man-made places and artifacts of our civilization would be swallowed up by nature,” he tells us. 
From this film, the idea of creating a photo series depicting the juxtaposition between the man-made and the natural world was born. “I wanted to create my own little world in which plants have grown to an enormous size and have taken over the city.”
Over the past six years, Hanratty went around the city to hunt for places to showcase an interesting juxtaposition between hard surfaces like concrete and glass and softness of plants. He says, “The most important decision when choosing a place is in how to get a clear view of a building or highway and reduce the man-made structure to an abstract shape.”
At the actual shoot, he uses a handheld flash to illuminate the larger-than-life plant in the foreground, to deliberately create a strange, unnatural feeling with the ‘man-made’ lighting. 
With its futuristic, Blade Runner-esque cityscapes composed of highways and skyscrapers of different sizes and shapes, Hanratty says Shanghai is the perfect place to create the imagery he had in his mind – even better suited than New York, where he started Photosynthesis.
“[Shanghai] has a wealth of places and subjects with layers of grittiness; I love that about the city,” says the photographer. 
The Photosynthesis series now has around 40 photos. With the constantly changing skyline in Shanghai, there's no doubt Hanratty will be able to find new locations to further develop the series in the future.
All photos by Sean Hanratty. See more of his work here.
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