Mads Nissen was born in Denmark in 1979 and graduated from The Danish School of Journalism in 2007. He moved to Shanghai to document the human and social consequences of China's historic economic rise working for Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel and Stern amongst others. He returned to Denmark to work for Berlingske/Scanpix, before joining the daily newspaper Politiken as a staff photographer in 2014. In 2016 he was commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center to photograph Colombia's president Juan Manuel Santos. Nissen's work has won World Press Photo Award and Pictures of the Year contests, as well as 15 awards from the Danish Picture of the Year, including twice both Photographer of the Year and Photo of the Year. Two monographs of his work have been published, Amazonas (2013) and De Faldne (The Fallen) (2010). Nissen is represented by Panos Pictures; in Italy by Prospekt and in Germany by Laif.