Brian McKee at Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Selections from "Urbanus," a series of approximately 71-by-57-inch photographs taken last year in India, constituted Brian McKee's auspicious American debut at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Just a few years out of Yale graduate school, the 27-year-old McKee has already had solo shows in Vienna, Frankfurt, Munich and Rome. His color prints of faraway places are thoughtful, simply composed, technically accomplished views of spacious interiors, doorways that lead who knows where and landscapes that would never be confused with any place in America.

Whether he's representing India (2004), Uzbekistan (2003), or Afghanistan (2002), McKee depicts desolate, abandoned sites that were formerly part of bustling urban centers. He photographs what were once beautifully decorated, elaborately carved structures that are now crumbling, peeling and scratched. The light McKee captures with his Deardorff 8-by-10 view camera, Fuji film, and no flash gives his subjects an additional poetic subtext. Corroded planes are interrupted by brightly glowing windows and doorways, as well as by dark, mysterious openings. These seemingly matter-of-fact, prosaic pictures are frequently animated by a quality that suggests the spiritual.

McKee also has a keen eye for color. In keeping with the muted nature of his scenes, he works within a palette of grays, beiges, a warm terra-cotta pink and an enchanting, shivery blue. The effect is unexpectedly elegant. McKee does not buck convention in his approach to composition. He centers most doors in his prints and situates side walls to the left and right. Yet, there's a slightly fantastic, even magical aspect to these images. Because he hangs his prints lower on the wall than usual and renders his angled stairs at near life-size, you feel as if you can step right into this world.

While CNN and Fox News have stripped the exoticism from many of the locations he is drawn to photograph, McKee is able to make us see those places in the afterglow of their former vibrancy. He depicts what civilizations look like after things have gone wrong.

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