Josefsohn: The man who created the face of the nineties – SPIEGEL ONLINE

He was a fighter, he was a hedonist, he was the man who created the face of the nineties, euphoric, young, wasteful. A Germany, as it had not been there, he wanted to show less German, just because the reunification bugged so, more America, which has always been the desire.

I knew Josefsohn not then, I knew only his pictures – the campaign for MTV about, with which he became famous, these skaters who became a photographer by accident or simply because it was cool and gave good money.

“bitch” label he slammed on the image of a lascivious dark-haired, “Egoist”, he stuck a bald Beau to, “bitch”, “Capricious thing”, “Hysterical Goat”, so called he the girl, which he found on the street, where the truth was, it was his conviction.

And because it all again so long seems to be here but, more than twenty years, you have to explain how in the nineties so much mixed, perhaps advertising, art, glamor, drugs, fun Serious Pop and policy -. and an atmosphere created by good, exhibitionist freedom

an abyss was always to feel

capitalism had triumphed so it appeared the fighting was over, that was the hope now could start the party right. But Josefsohn, the astute observer and skeptical philanthropist, noted from the outset what the other side of this celebration, this self-celebration, could be this self-forgetfulness.

The sadness was always there, even in the gayest photos. An abyss was felt always, had perhaps to do with the fact that he came from a family that had fallen himself into the abyss, had by the German hatred of Jews, and furnished him with an epic sense of what to can happen to people.

why

his pictures have a quality that went far beyond the advertising or magazine photograph that was his job, and made him the best chronicler of his generation, funny as Wolfgang Tillmans, political and Juergen plates, anarchic, wild, deserted than the others.

And somehow, it seemed, had its price. When he suffered a stroke in 2012, that was a shock, because the youth, understood his friends and admirers, was now finally over that. He picked himself up, he fought back, but he was a wounded man.

And so I got to know him, and I am grateful for the time, a few times that I could be in his studio between the images that were part of its energy, which I felt at this location, part of the pop-poetic interpretation of the world project Josefsohn. He saw where others hinschauten.

Sovereign play with the German imagery

The Klitschkos for example, in the brown robe, on the sofa, with mini dogs on the arm, this crack as a trench of associations from, juggled on so many levels with the clichés of strangeness, the stuffiness, the mustaches that you wanted to laugh immediately and did not do it yet.

or the four naked, in Helmut Newton black and white, only that the Jew Josef son did not want to stage quite as herrenmenschig and women therefore wore white Star Wars masks. Irony, no, it was no irony, it was a sovereign game with the German imagery that had torn a century and destroyed many people.

Or, Helmut Berger, beloved self destroyers. Or Julia Hummer, which climbs up the Mercedes star. Or the Israeli flag that he hoisted over the former House of Hermann Goering, provided with the slogan:. Always important “More Jewish Settlements on the Sylt Strip”

, it seemed, was to understand him who he was, in this strange Germany – and so he went to Israel to his relatives, the kibbutz, he danced with them, even when he was in a wheelchair. For the TIME magazine he was traveling, which in times of journalistic Karg- and stinginess of gratitude to have accepted this so special.

Josefsohn was when we met, always full of ideas and Plans. He wanted to bring out a new perfume he wanted Berlin to miss a new image he wanted to conquer the Documenta he probably also wanted to show the art world that she had never understood what kind of he was, this DJ, so he signed his pictures, which were in large boxes on the floor, because he had to sell them to survive.

he was the unkränkeste sick, you could imagine at that time, he was badly drawn and wanted to the day smile, he had his despair in the handle, so it seemed, but how can you have, really?

and so his death is a shock, even if you could almost watch it die, so open, so in large, exhibitionist in a broad sense it was so.

He was an artist who was struggling with the world, which he found in himself. He needed, and that is always important to understand the state of Israel as a homeland. He was, I think, a free man. He was Josefsohn.