The city of Chongqing, one of the biggest in central china, went through one of the fastest development process in the country. Tim Franco, a french photographer based in Shangaï, followed this crazy development from 2009. Now, he wants to publish a book, resulting from 5 years of photographic work about the city.
As a result of migrating population, Chongqing suddenly became of the largest cities in the world with up to 30 million inhabitants. When he first visited the city in 2009, Tim Franco said he was totally lost: "Old houses were being destroyed and over passed by new giant bridges and oversized housing complex. It took me a while to start to understand what was going on."
For the past 5 years, Tim traveled extensively to Chongqing exploring its different districts, witnessing the changes and trying to understand how the massive rural population was adapting to its new urban lifestlyle.
Working with an analog medium format camera, he chose to take a step back from classical portrait and documentary approach, showing the people in their disproportionated environment.
As year passed Tim realized that he was also documenting the growing life of a chinese city.- "Chongqing is maybe an extreme with its unique landscapes and tumultuous history but its also quite representative of what china is going through as a country. This process is not over, either for chongqing as a city , or for my ongoing documentary work. But I feel like what I gathered is enough to allow a large audience to discover what maybe the most widely unknown megacity in the world."
The personal project he has been working on for the last few years is finally taking shape of a book.
Metamorpolis
Price.- 29 euros
Format.- Size, 25x29 cm / 112 pages / Hard cover.
Deluxe demi mat paper.
This book will be his first one. The layout is nearly finished. Some last pictures, that Tim took in the beginning of 2015 are being edited right now. Here are some previews of the book (work in progress);
