Tania Franco Klein began to approach the world of photography during her degree course in Architecture in Mexico City, completing her studies with a Masters in Photography at the University of the Arts London. Her research focuses on contemporary themes that concern the various aspects of everyday life such as leisure, consumerism, media pressure, emotional disconnection, the obsession with eternal youth and the American dream.

Our Life In The Shadows speaks of American Dream and tries to evoke an atmosphere of isolation, despair, absence, disappearance and anxiety, through images studied. William Eggleston’s influence is particularly present both in the subjects and in the choice of colours: it is no coincidence that Tania herself won an Aperture contest, inspired by the famous photographer.

The artist has motivated some narrative choices as follows:

“My characters find themselves almost anonymous, melting into places, vanishing into them, constantly looking for any possibility of escape. They find themselves alone, desperate and exhausted, constantly walking the line between trying hard and feeling defeated”.

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han says that we live in a time of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform; that we have left behind the immunological era and we are now in the neuronal era, characterized by neuropsychiatric diseases such as depression, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, burnout syndrome and bipolar disorder.

All this constitutes a new perspective of the American Dream that, as it transforms, brings out its darkest side, that of the shadows, as the title of the project suggests.

Follow Tania on Instagram and on her website.