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Chongqing is one of the largest cities in China, and one that has recently undergone one of the most rapid urban developments in the world. Tim Franco, a Shanghai-based French photographer, has been following and documenting this enormous city’s equally great transformation since 2009. His book is a rare photographic collection and documentation of Chongqing’s bewildering scale, containing over 60 original images Tim Franco recorded over dozens of trips to the city across a fascinating five-year period.

Following all the migrations linked to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the city of Chongqing very quickly became one of the most populated in the world, with an estimated population of more than 30 million inhabitants. When he visited the city for the first time in 2009, Tim Franco explains that he was completely lost: “Old houses were everywhere being demolished, covered over by gigantic new bridges or replaced by huge apartment buildings. It took me a while to understand what was happening."

In 2009, when the city's new mayor was waging a war against the local mafia, Tim was regularly sent to the area for various photographic commissions. A year later, when he realized the disappearance of the oldest districts of the city, he decided to start photographing this transformation of the city: "My objective was to document the way in which the inhabitants would succeed in adapt to this radical development."