The photography couple Mathias Braschler & Monika Fischer have been commissioned by a insurance company to take portraits around the world. For example a small farmer in Kenya who has a micro-insurance for his crops that is financed by them. Or a poor Indian worker who can afford to go to a good hospital thanks to a health insurance scheme backed by the government.
Braschler/Fischler began their tour with their own son, Elias. We will be following them to all 14 countries they plan to visit.
In the end they will use the complete work for an exhibition
Mathias Braschler was born in Aargau, Switzerland, in 1969. He studied geography and modern history at the University of Zurich for two years, before beginning his career in photography as an auto-didact in 1994. He worked for various magazines and newspapers in Switzerland before moving to New York in 1998, where he published his first book, Madison Avenue (1999). In the following years he lived and worked in New York.
Monika Fischer was born in St. Gallen Rhine Valley in Switzerland in 1971. While studying Romance languages and German at the University of Zurich, she also began working as a dramaturge and director assistant at the opera house in Zurich. Over several years she worked with very important directors. Besides her successful collaboration with Mathias Braschler, Monika Fischer completed a postgraduate degree in scenography at the Zurich University of the Arts between 2003 and 2005.
In 2003 Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer began working closely together as a photography team, producing a portrait project that was published as About Americans (2007), which took the two of them all over the United States. In 2005ΰ6 they worked on the Faces of Football project. With idealistic support from FIFA, they photographed thirty soccer stars immediately after important games. One year before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Braschler and Fischer began a seven-month-long epic journey through China. On their 30,000-kilometer road trip they shot portraits of Chinese people from diverse social classes throughout this immense nation full of rich contrasts. In 2009 they realized an acclaimed photo series about people who are directly affected by climate change.
Braschler and Fischer have won many awards for their works, including a World Press Photo Award and an ADC Bronze Award in Germany. Their photography projects are published in countless international magazines, appear in photo books, and are exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Today Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer divide their time between New York, where they are represented by Vaughan Hannigan, and Zurich.
