Displaced #1 – Destination Senegal
Displaced – our new project in collaboration with the UN
Evocative stories of people who have to leave their homes due to climate change
Almost exactly 15 years ago, we were in Cuba shooting the last portraits for our project “The Human Face of Climate Change”. When we shot the very last portrait for this work in Playa del Cajio, we had no idea that this project would be seen by over 75 million people, in publications, exhibitions, lectures and online.
For some time now, we have therefore been thinking about doing another global project dealing with climate change. However, the actual implementation had to be put on hold for the time being, as a global pandemic proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. In addition to COVID, however, financing such a project was also a major challenge. A challenge that still exists today. Whereas 15 years ago it was still possible to finance a project of this size largely through the media, this is now completely illusory. What is progressing almost faster than the climate crisis is the global crisis of the media, which have less and less money to finance documentary projects.
However, the topic was important enough to us that neither corona nor the lack of money could deter us. After long and intensive research and many discussions, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to focus on a central consequence of climate change in this new project: DISPLACEMENT. The loss of a home, possibly even a homeland, due to the consequences of climate change and the resulting migration, whether local or cross-border, permanent or temporary.
The year 2024 was to be dominated by this project, so in the first few months of the year we contacted experts, media titles and organizations to present our concept and quickly discovered that our topic was met with great interest. We quickly had Stern, Geo and Corriere della Sera on board as media partners. However, the breakthrough came when it became apparent in March that a collaboration with the UN was on the cards. The World Food Programme had been interested in a partnership for some time. However, the IOM (International Organization for Migration) also came on board. Manuel Pereira, the head of the “Climate Change and Migration” section, was enthusiastic about our idea and didn’t take long to be convinced of a partnership. To our great delight, he also agreed to provide partial funding on the condition that the work would be shown as a major exhibition at COP 30 in Belem (World Climate Conference) in November 2025.
It was therefore clear to us that we had to start production in order to meet this deadline, even if the USD 50,000 from the IOM did not even cover half of the total costs.
But more about that later. For now, here a few stories about the first trip of our project.
Best regards & see you soon
Mathias & Monika
BRASCHLER/FISCHER
braschlerfischer.com
+41 79 205 0330
Displaced – Destination Senegal, 9.-18. April 2024
Our first destination was Senegal, and we were already on a plane to Dakar in April. Of course, our son Elias was also on board, who was to provide valuable services as an assistant. Our arrival in West Africa turned out to be not so easy. Unfortunately, all the local contacts with whom we had prepared this trip had forgotten to tell us that our first day in Senegal was one of the most important national holidays and that everything was really closed. Even getting a cab in Dakar turned out to be a challenge.
In the end, however, we managed to steer everything in the right direction and set off the next day on the 5-hour drive to St. Louis, our actual destination. This historic city, the former capital of West Africa, is acutely threatened by coastal erosion associated with stronger storms and rising sea levels. In the traditional Guet N’dar district, located on the beach, many people have already lost their homes and had to move to a relocation center in Diougop, around an hour away from the sea. The distance to the sea is of great importance to the people, as most of them live from fishing. We portrayed Doudou Sy and Khadim Wade, two young fishermen who have to travel an hour by bus to the sea every morning and do the same in the opposite direction in the evening.
We were also on the road for 5 days in St. Louis, not without some complications. Both our driver and our local assistant had some difficulty finding their way around, which led to the two of them having a huge row somewhere in no man’s land on the fourth day. They shouted at each other in Wolof, both blaming each other for the fact that we were somewhere, but certainly not where we should have been. Only after a lot of persuasion were we able to stop our assistant from sacking the driver on the spot, which would have been impractical anyway as he also owned the minibus.
But Elias also had to prove himself under the most difficult conditions. Our new drone was used again and again for filming, and our son had the not-so-easy task of protecting the drone from around 1000 highly interested local children after it landed. Landing was a bit of a challenge anyway, as many of the children had fun throwing all kinds of objects at the drone as soon as it flew low enough. Luckily for us, they didn’t aim too precisely…
After 10 days we returned to Switzerland, enriched by a lot of great encounters and many adventures and with the first DISPLACED stories for our new project in our luggage.
