André François (São Paulo, 1966) worked as an assistant, waiter and joiner apprentice. He, then, discovered himself dyslexic. He tried painting for a while, but abandoned it. He started taking pictures at the age of 16 – and ever since then registered different people from the Americas to Europe and Africa. He became a documentary photographer. He lived in São Thomé das Letras (MG), where his first major work, about the life of quarry workers, took place – and resulted in his first book, São Thomé das Letras, in 1992. Through photography he understood the world in which he lived and the power of image as a transforming agent. Such findings made him the founder of the NGO ImageMagica in 1995. ImageMagica.

At the III Latin American Conference of Promotion and Education for Health, he was awarded by the Pan American Health Organization with the 1st place in the category of Communication and Health. He was one of the finalists of the Social Entrepreneur Award 2006, an initiative of the Schwab Foundation in conjunction with the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper. His work methodology was acknowledged by Fundação Banco do Brasil, Petrobrás and UNESCO. He discovered a new world when visiting more than 20 hospitals around the country equipped with his camera and great willing to find special caretakers. He found them and gathered their stories at the book Caring: a documentary about humane medical care in Brazil, released in 2006.

He decided that this book was just the beginning: these images were to be shown to the world in order to motivate real transformations. He got the UN support with the results he achieved. He was moved by the stories of those who seeked health services, and decided to continue his journey to show the world the struggle of Brazilian patients to have access to it. With this book, another curve from his path was completed. Now he is preparing himself to set out to more than ten foreign countries in order to discover universal care and access.