Tania Franco - Klein

Tania Franco Klein is a Mexican photographer known for images that feature characters, often self-portraits, in staged and evocative locations. She has a fascination with social behavior including for example leisure, consumption, media overstimulation, emotional disconnection, obsession with eternal youth, the American Dream and the psychological sequels they generate in our everyday life.

Her characters find themselves almost anonymous, perhaps looking for escape; they are alone, desperate and exhausted. Franco Klein’s stagings are redolent of commercial photography, or perhaps Hitchcockian and Lynchian film stills, as her subjects’ glamour is matched by their malaise. 

Although many of the photographs are self-portraits, the artist suppresses her identity, with wigs and retro fashions, obscured by shadows and props, to make room for the enigmatic, anonymous characters she plays. 

Franco Klein's work has been reviewed and featured by Aperture Foundation, The British Journal of Photography, I-D Magazine, The Guardian, Vogue Italia and has been commissioned by clients like The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Aperture Foundation and Dior.