Quentin Shih is a Chinese American photographer. The photo above is one in a series called "The stranger in the glass box" for Christian Dior (the famous haute couture and perfumery firm).
The model trapped in the glass box is wearing Dior. Around the box are normal Chinese people dressed in their work uniforms. They are looking somewhat perplexed at this stranger who seems to have landed there by mistake.
This glass box is symbolic of the perhaps insurmountable cultural barrier between the rich West and China. These ordinary Chinese, trapped in a boring, grey, empty no man’s land, can only observe. They cannot touch this oversized beautiful alien being in her aquarium-like spaceship/cube. They can only desire her and what she stands for.
This advertising photo is not just aesthetically pleasing; it is a political comment on consumerism and globalization. It is about conformity versus individualism, about poverty and wealth, the many and the few, about desire and frustration.
Article by Annika Nischik
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