Book of the day > Metamorpolis by Tim Franco. Pendant Ce Temps. 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 Shanghai, followed this crazy development from 2009. Now, he has published a book, resulting from 5 years of photographic work about the city.

As a result of migrating population, Chongqing China suddenly became one of the largest cities in the world with up to 30 million inhabitants. When photographer Tim Franco 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".

In 2009, as the new leader was going on war with organized crime, Tim was sent on assignments by different international papers. About a year later, as he was witnessing some of the oldest district of the city being destroyed, he decided to document the change of the city from his own point of view : "My goal was to document how the people adapt to such a radical change".

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 lifestyle. 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 incongruous 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 it’s 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."

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 it’s 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."