Large Format Portrait Photography

Tim Franco's relationship with large format photography started in Shanghai — not on assignment, but with friends. Musicians, artists, people he knew from the city's creative scene. The process was slow, deliberate, and completely analogue: each portrait shot directly onto photographic paper, developed in the darkroom using chemicals mixed by hand. No digital files. No shortcuts. The Propaganda Studio launch in Shanghai became one of the first public showings of this work — vintage large format Polaroid portraits displayed alongside film and print, a statement about a different way of making images.

That personal practice became the foundation for a series of long-term documentary projects, each using a different large format process suited to its subject. Unperson — Tim's work on North Korean defectors living in South Korea — was shot on large format film. The slowness of the process demanded a different kind of relationship between photographer and subject. People who had spent years making themselves invisible sat in front of a camera that required them to be completely still and completely present. Gender Monarchy, documenting Korea's drag scene, was shot on large format Polaroid — the instant materiality of the print mirroring the performative immediacy of drag itself. Illicit Inks, a portrait series on Korean tattoo artists working outside the law, was made on paper negatives — raw, direct, slightly unpredictable. East Coast Surfers, following Korean surfers along the country's eastern coastline, used large format film to slow down a subject that is inherently fast.

Each project grew from the same conviction: that large format portraiture creates a different quality of attention — from the photographer, and from the subject. The image that results carries something that faster processes simply cannot produce.

Tim has since observed a growing interest from luxury houses in this approach — commissioning bespoke large format portraits of clients and collaborators as objects of genuine value. The portrait as a luxury object. The session as an experience in itself.

Large format portrait commissions are available in Paris, Seoul, and across Europe and Asia.