Chongqing Stories – People 1

My Chongqing Story continues with this series of portraits taken from the popular district of Jiefangbei and the entertainment district of Jiaochangkou. By portraying those people, I wanted to have a representation of the local active population, the youth going out and the families strolling by the modern new avenues and luxury shops representing the fast growth of the city. With most of the people we met, we also talked with them to get an insight of their situation in the chongqing urban environment, what do they do, what are their social status and what type of building they live in, modern towers, old houses etc.. The goal of the project will be to link portraits to their urban environement in a series of diptychs. More about it here: http://blog.timfranco.com/chongqing-stories-part-1/

shanghai event photography

As Shanghai is becoming an international city, tendencies have changed from selling chinese products towards selling products to chinese. With the highest rise of rich people in the world, all kind of foreign companies are trying to capture the chinese market. From luxury brands to western style products, companies are making a lot of effort & investment to seduce this new clientele. For time to time, I find myself hired by some of those companies to help them through this promotion process. Here, a Spanish Wine Company is organizing a wine tasting in an high end shanghai club (M1NT )

Tim Franco is shanghai based photographer and he is available for event photography within Shanghai & greater China

Ulan Bator, from slums to luxury

    Since the late 2000′s, with Mongolia opening its doors to foreign investments, the face of the capital city, Ulan Bator is changing. As on one side, the economy is booming and foreign companies are moving into high rise modern towers occupied by fancy restaurants and luxury shops, the north of the city is developing towards another direction.

      With the coldest winters ever recorded in 2008 / 2009, thousands of herders have left the countryside hoping to find a job in the city. But with the government sharing the wealth from the mine in cash instead of infrastructure, poor people are accumulating on the hills north of Ulan Bator, creating a slum of Gers and small houses. With no access to water and sometimes electricity, they are burning their trash and coal to warm themselves in the winter, creating a suffocating cloud of pollution above the Ulan Bator.

       At the same time, foreign educated mongolians and the new wealthy part of the population are experiencing fast changes and an access to an exclusive lifestyle, yet inaccessible for the majority of mongolia’s inhabitants.

< click here for the full page portfolio story >

>> archive photos of Ulan Bator

>> full page story of gobi desert & mining in mongolia
>> archive photos for the Oyu Tolgoi mining project
>> archive photos for the illegal mining and gobi desert