The Jewing Gun – IDF Soldiers in Israel, 2009
Daniel Josefsohn
Everything's gonna be alright mother
Kunstverein Hamburg
1 May – 30 May 2010
Blurring the borders between art, design and fashion photography, Daniel Josefsohn's works capture the spirit of a generation that playfully mixes media and styles creating a very individual language for its environment and way of life. Whether the subject is right-wing extremism in Germany or the Middle East conflict, Josefsohn invariably finds unusual motifs and unsettling scenes. His series "Jewing Gun" portrays young Israeli soldiers. The photographs are characterized by the contrasts between military uniforms and small accessories like sunglasses, which make the whole series resemble a fashion spread for a magazine. In fact, what the accessories actually do is show the hue of personality the soldiers have tried to bring to their regulation clothing. Josefsohn does not capture his subjects like an impartial bystander, but as a highly conscious observer who eschews the repetitive stereotypes we so often see in the media. Daniel Josefsohn was born in 1961 and currently lives in Berlin. Since 1995 he has been working as a freelance photographer for numerous magazines. He first came to public attention with a series of black-and-white portraits of youngsters, which he took for an MTV campaign. The first institutional solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hamburg presents a wide range of his works.
