06
Aug 12
COMRADES
Comrades, a set of photographic portraits, invites the viewer to come face to face with the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and trans-gendered men and women of Shanghai. The subjects are shown in decontextualized space, their personal stories withheld. Together, they are rendered uniform and anonymous; yet, each face contains a distinct reading. Comrades raises questions of individuality vs. collectivity, personal identity vs. social identity, and the private vs. the open.
“同志”,一组肖像摄影,使观众与来自上海的男同性恋 者、女同性恋者、双性恋者与跨性别者面面相观。 “同志”的主题在独立于情境的空间中展示出来,个人的故 事则被隐而不露。这些照片放在一起时,呈现的是这一 群体的一致性和匿名性;然而,分开看,群体中的每张 脸孔又是鲜明的,独特的。 “同志”引发的是个人与集体,私人身份与社会身份以及隐 晦与公开的问题。
The full portfolio is also online on the website : http://timfranco.photoshelter.com/gallery/comrades/G0000Mkn67Kb5VUo/
17
Mar 11
THIAPS is releasing a hard cover book ( also available in soft cover ) called Unlimited Grain Portraits. Frans Peter Verheyen curated numerous photographer into this compilation of analog made portraits. From 35mm to large format, the books seems quite diverse in style and subjects. Breaking away from a documentary style book, each portraits seems to emphasize on the esthetics and the fact that they are all made shot on films.
Two of my gao’an series portrait are featured in this book. The gao’an shots are a series of large and medium format portrait captured in my own little studio which looks directly in a street called gao’an road in shanghai. I am using this studio to explore close up documentary portraits through various angles and lights. By using minimalist means and high quality lenses, my goal is to try to be able to capture the personality of each of my subjects. They are pausing very naturally in front of my lenses and I specifically ask them not to smile. I ll try to get them in a situation of confort in which they can reveal themselves to the film. I am still in the experimentation phase of this process, that is why my subject are still composed of friends and people that I come across in Shanghai, but the ultimate focus is to get a documentary series together within this year.
In the meanwhile, here is two early shots of those capture, in between lot of other interesting and beautiful portraits
Click here to purchase and or preview the full book
Below are the two featured portraits and of course I can advise only to look at them printed on real paper , but in the meanwhile, you get them here 
