Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer

braschler/fischer have won numerous awards for their works, including a World Press Photo Award in 2007. Their photography projects appear internationally and have been published in The Guardian, Vanity Fair and Stern, as well as in photo books (see below). Their work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

After five years of collaboration, braschler/fischer won a World Press Photo Award for “Faces of Football” in 2007. Featuring known soccer players such as David Beckham, the idea was to shoot the athlete right after the match, which created a certain intensity of the gaze. For their project “The Human Face of Climate Change”, braschler/fischer were selected photographers for the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame in 2010. For the series “Guantanamo”, braschler/fischer were awarded the Hansel Mieth Prize in 2012 and the Prix Photo in 2015. Braschler/fischers distinct photographic style and way of working has been covered by The New York Times, Stern and the Guardian

Mathias Braschler, and Monika Fischer, aka braschler/fischer are critically acclaimed Swiss photographers known for portrait projects and photographic environmental activism. In 2003, braschler/fischer started collaborating as a photography team while developing the portrait project „About Americans“. In the following years, braschler/fischer created portraits of humans from all backgrounds and cultures. „Faces of Football“, a series of portraits of the world’s most important soccer players, „China“, portraits of people from all social backgrounds and regions of China, and „Affected - The Human Face of Climate Change“, a series of environmental portraits from around the world, are among their largest projects. Their project “Act Now!”, a portrait series of famous climate activists to raise awareness at the 2015 climate negotiations in Paris, was created in close collaboration with the United Nations.

The duo met while studying at university and first started working on a project based on the Werner Herzog Film Fitzcarraldo for the Opera house of Manaus, Brazil in 2002. Their work relationship evolved into the formation of a permanent team, and they became the duo braschler/fischer in 2003.

Monika Fischer was born in St. Gallen’s Rhine Valley in Switzerland in 1971. While studying Romance and German philology at the University of Zurich, she also began working as a dramaturg and director’s assistant at the Zurich opera house. Over several years she worked with international theatre directors in Switzerland. Monika Fischer graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts with an executive master in scenography in 2005. Her experience in lighting and mis-en-scene is an important part of braschler/fischer's visual style.

Mathias Braschler was born in Aargau, Switzerland, in 1969. He studied geography and modern history at the University of Zurich. He was strongly touched by a photographic exhibition of Sebastiao Salgado and learned from photographer and filmmaker Alberto Venzago before beginning his career in photography in 1994. Starting out as a photo journalist, he worked for various magazines and newspapers such as NZZ and Sonntags Zeitung in Switzerland before moving to New York City in 1998, where he carried out his first book project, Madison Avenue in 1999. Through his experience of covering 9/11 for Newsweek, Mathias Braschler decided to move more into portrait photography. In the following years he lived and worked in New York.