Zinc porphyrin dimer (1) has been designed and synthesized as a novel host of N-containing ligands. The assembly behavior and photophysical changes of its host-guest complexes were evaluated by 1 H NMR, fluorescence, and UV-visible titrations, and the processes reveal that the host-guest assembly first creates a stable sandwich complex, then an axial coordination equilibrium appears between the sandwich complex and free ligand. The changes of absorption spectra of the assembly processes rely on the stabilities of the complexes, and fluorescence quenching depends on the axial coordination equilibrium, which indicates that the axial ligation/de-ligation dynamics is indeed a pathway from the excited state to the ground state for metalloporphyrin complexes.