Madison Avenue

For eight months photographer Mathias Braschker worked on a project about the famous New York Avenue, taking portraits of people living in all its sections between 23rd and 138th Street. From downtown business centres with their white collar culture to the exclusive shopping area on the upper East Side and to Latin- and African-American-dominated Harlem, Braschler searched for typical and emblematic faces. There are powerful lawyers in their offices, boutique owners, single women in their homes, crack addicts, medical doctors, the unemployed and workaholics, people living in their white and black ghettos. The photographs oscillate between pride and desperation and form a portrait of the Big Apple. They show one of the world's famous shopping streets in all its contradictions and tell the story of how it came to be the origin of many myths and fairy tales.