Guantánamo
On the 11th of January 2002 the first few of a total number of 779 detainees were brought to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, that was created by the Bush administration to incarcerate “illegal enemy combatants”. This category of prisoners has only been recognized by the White House and the Pentagon. Most detainees were held at Guantanamo Bay for years without charge and without trial, in disregard of the Geneva Convention. Very few of them had anything to do with 9/11 or al-Qaeda. The vast majority were either Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war in Afghanistan that began long before 9/11, or humanitarian aid workers, religious teachers and economic migrants , who were for the most part sold to the Americans by their allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The majority of the Guantanamo prisoners has been released in the last few years to many different countries all over the world. But once a Guantanamo detainee is released, his ordeal is not over. Physical and psychological torture and years of incarceration leave deep marks. Although most of them have been declared innocent – a fact that was established in endless interrogations and torture sessions – many people still regard them with suspicion. Guantanamo becomes a stigma for them and a return to a normal life is next to impossible.
Everybody knows about Guantanamo. Most people know what it stands for and what has happened there and still is happening. But very few people know what these men look like who have been held indefinitely at this detention camp and who they are.
For this project we have visited 16 former Guantanamo prisoners from all around the world. We have shot intimate portraits of them and recorded in depth interviews about their experience on video. We wanted to give these people a voice and a face and hear their side of the story. We wanted to find out how they are living today and how they are dealing with what they went through.
Mathias Braschler
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 autodidact in 1994. He worked for various magazines and newspapers in Switzerland before moving to New York in 1998, where he carried out
his first book project , Madison Avenue (1999). In the following years he lived and worked in New York.
Monika Fischer
Monika Fischer was born in St. Gallen’s 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’s 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.
2003 was the start of a close collaboration between Mathias Braschler & Monika Fischer as a photography team on the occasion of the portrait project About Americans. In the following years they have specialized in elaborate projects focusing on humans from all backgrounds and cultures. „Faces of Football“, a series of portraits of the world’s most imortant soccer players, „China“, portraits of people from all social backgrounds and regions of China and „The Human Face of Climate Change“, a series of environmental portraits of people from around the world, affected by climate change, belong to their most important projects. Their most recent project was a series of intimate portraits of former Guantanamo prisoners.
Braschler & Fischer have won numerous awards for their works, including a World Press Photo Award. 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 Zurich and New York, where they are represented by Vaughan Hannigan.
Guantanamo – Mathias Braschler & Monika Fischer
From september 1st to september 21st
Église des Dominicains
Rue François Rabelais
66000 Perpignan – France
