‘The Silence Before It Changes’
Initially started as an exhibition for Magnum Photos and Good Growth Hub, ‘The Silence Before It Changes’ continued as a project, later featuring photos on Simon Wheatley’s ‘Lost Dreams’ exhibition.
Trying to become a photographer, I felt like my pursuit had taken me from the world I was from, to a another one, another space where I wasn’t familiar with, and in my journey to integrate into this predominantly white middle class sphere, I had kind of lost touch of the people and the culture that I was raised in, the project became an important story to my life, having to reach back to my origins
My initiative was to display 2nd generation Bengalis (of which I am a part of). Simon Wheatley encouraged me to capture the last generation whose parents don’t speak english, immortalising them before they disappear completely.
I’ll admit when first I embarked on this process, I tried to avoid this sort of theme because I thought it was cliche. But through Simon’s insistence, I started to think my specific heritage having so little depiction could actually lead to making the project unique.
Initially, I was pretty stuck, my life’s course made me become pretty detached to the people I grew up with. I went my own way to do things like photography that led me to different people, different friends, and with few fellow Bengali kids going into the arts (ones from the Tower Hamlets working class anyway) It was easy to drift away from that community. Unknowingly I became detached from my previous life. I had to regain access.
It was then a unexpected, but beautiful side effect occurred. After meeting friends and family members i haven’t properly seen in years, I reconnected with my roots. This became the main aspect to not only this process, but my personal life; the journey of regaining this connection.
As I started to shoot, It became quickly apparent, through their reactions, that they’ve never been shot with a camera before, much less from a Bengali like themselves. A polar difference to middle class art students I’ve shot, who are used to photography. It spoke not only to how little bengali kids had access to art, but how little art tries to access them.
Then the importance of the project dawned on me. No one else will shoot these guys. If I didn’t, who will?
“Growing up in Tower Hamlets, East London, Sabab Khan has seen first-hand the increasingly rapid changes sweeping through London's neighbourhoods. As gentrification sweeps through the capital, communities are pushed further out onto the peripheries. As families are moved out, the communities that remain become divided. Titled ‘The Silence Before It Changes’, Khan's work uses the twilight moments between night and day, just before the city springs into life, as a metaphor for the silence when it comes to protecting communities from those often unforgiving changes.”
— COMPLEX MAGAZINE, Sep 18, 2020