A Google Wife

‘In 2011 my husband got an offer to work for Google in Zürich, Switzerland. Neither me nor my husband spoke German or ever lived outside of Russia.

We rented an apartment on the top floor at Zwinglistrasse 17, twenty minutes walk from the Google office. I had a limited residence permit and couldn’t work for two years. So I stayed at home. We bought curtains, a table and some glasses. We met my husband’s new colleagues, Google employees, and their wives, Google wives.’

In A Google Wife, using a very personal and empathetic language full of details that only appear after an in-depth reading, photographer Olga Bushkova portrays her daily life and reflects on issues such as uprootedness and adaptation to a new culture, the part of large companies in the reconciliation of work and private life, or the feminist review of women’s role in the professional context.

Olga Bushkova (Rostov-on-Don, Russia) studied in Rostov State University and earned a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Programming. In 2011 she moved to Zürich, Switzerland. Since 2013 she works professionally in Switzerland as a photographer. She has developed two personal projects: “A Google Wife” and “How I tried to convince my husband to have children”. In 2015, together with her husband, she produced the documentary movie Russian Tour. Her dummy A Google Wife was the winner of the Fiebre Dummy Award 2017.