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Tania Franco Klein
Our Life in the Shadows
Tania Franco Klein
Tania Franco Klein. Apartment (self-portrait), 2016
Tania Franco Klein’s photographic practice shifts between truth and fiction, an ambiguous space where the richness and complexity of the medium shine brightest.
Our Life in the Shadows is a body of work that sparks dynamic conversations related to femininity, domesticity, theatricality and the psychology of solitude. In Franco Klein’s work, each line of thought collides in cinematic and surrealist fashion. Together, they speak to the evolution of contemporary life as a woman.
Throughout Our Life in the Shadows, we find isolated female figures wound tautly in feelings of tension and anxiety within domestic spaces and desert environments. Often they are entangled in their environments: faces reflected in toasters, nude figures gesturing mysteriously in bathrooms, bodies laying atop and alongside (and in one instance inside) couches, beds, and chairs, defying the expectation of comfort. In other instances, women travel through desert scenes accompanied by cars, trains and planes. A yearning to escape carries into the domestic world which is depicted as more prison than paradise.
Franco Klein’s deft and innovative imagecraft ultimately ties the entire body of work together. Her cinema-like strategies take form in a tapestry of rich color, dramatic pairings of light and shadow, and play on perspective that provides us with an intimate, sometimes voyeuristic view of the subjects. As viewers, we are more witnesses than participants, observing private moments of tension. In some ways, Franco Klein has opened a private visual diary for all to read. And within it are deep-rooted and poetically narrated conflicts between self and societal expectations.
Selected Works
Tania Franco Klein
Toaster (self-portrait), 2016
5.5 ETH
Tania Franco Klein
The Waiting, 2016
2.5 ETH
Tania Franco Klein
Yellow Tiles (self-portrait), 2016
5.5 ETH
Tania Franco Klein
First Act (self-portrait), 2016
2.5 ETH
Tania Franco Klein
The Puzzle, 2016
1.5 ETH
Tania Franco Klein
Apartment (self-portrait), 2016
1.5 ETH
Full Collection
Artist
Tania Franco Klein
1990 (Mexico)
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Tania Franco Klein is a Mexican photographer based in Mexico City who started her photography praxis while gaining her BA Architecture in Mexico City, which took her to pursue her Master in Photography at the University of the Arts London.
Her work is highly influenced by her fascination with social behavior and contemporary practices such as leisure, consumption, media overstimulation, emotional disconnection, the obsession with eternal youth, the American dream in the Western world and the psychological sequels they generate in our everyday life.
Franco Klein’s work has been reviewed and featured by international critique including ARTFORUM, CNN, L.A Times, I-D Magazine, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Aperture Foundation, The British Journal of Photography, and has been commissioned by clients like The New York Times, The New Yorker, FT Weekend, New York Magazine, Vogue and Dior. Her work has been exhibited widely both in solo and group shows across Europe, the USA, and Mexico, including Somerset House London, the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and Aperture Gallery in NYC. Her latest exhibition Proceed to The Route which showcased a wide selection of her latest two series was presented by ROSEGALLERY and received enthusiastic reviews both in her home city of Mexico (2019) and Los Angeles (2020).
Franco Klein was selected by W Mag as one of nine photographers to follow and has received the Sony World Photography Awards in two consecutive years, The Lensculture Exposure Awards, Lensculture Storytelling Awards, The Felix Schoeller Photo Award of Germany Nominee, FOAM Paul Huf Award nominee, and recently received the Photo London Artproof Schliemann Award as the best emerging artist during Photo London fair 2018. Her first publication Positive Disintegration (2019) was nominated for the Paris Photo Aperture Foundation First Book Award.
Press + Articles
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01
On Tania Franco Klein’s “Our Life in the Shadows”
The Paris Review (article)
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02
Our life in the shadows,’ surreal photos that mirror our fractured times
The Washington Post (article)
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Our Life in the Shadows
Lensculture (article)