Daniel Josefsohn, the artist and long-time Sleek contributor passed away last week at the age of 54. The Hamburg-born provocateur was one of Germany’s most influential contemporary photographers and was well know for his sharp, intelligent and a times cynical portraits of modern society. With the last studio visit with did with Josefsohn for SLEEK 47 we remember the artist, his work and wit.
Berlin Wedding: lively, trashy, iconoclastic, home to many artists. In one of the many backyards, Sleek spies “Studio Josefsohn” scrawled crookedly on a doorbell, and enter the dark, silent stairwell. No sign of anyone, least of all the artist. Finally, on the fourth and final floor we find a likely-looking door to knock on. The artist, sporting a ginger beard and a cigarette dangling from his mouth, greets us: “Careful, mind the cat doesn’t escape.”
We find ourselves in a spacious room, simultaneously studio and living quarters, with works from the past decades stacked against the walls and on the shelves – everything in flux. Josefsohn is planning renovations; to tear down some walls, create more space for himself, his work and his ideas. He explains: “My approach has become increasingly conceptual over the years, I spend a lot of time thinking about the works instead of spontaneously creating.” Our gaze travels further, to a corner, where many modes of transportation are piled up, including a large, camouflage-green bike adorned with Hebrew characters, the artist’s wheelchair and skateboards that were produced for a recent solo show.
Josefsohn tears us out of a reverie: “Can I offer you some coffee?” Extracting the milk from the fridge, Sleek notices a postcard on which the Star of David has been replaced by a swastika. “That’s going to be a pillow case. I’m producing it in cooperation with the fashion designer Claudia Skoda. The swastika is going to be embroidered along with the sentence “Jew. Israeli, now disabled. There’s got to be a way to make money out of that in Germany”.
It’s only one of Josefsohn’s projects with autobiographical elements. References to his youth, his skate-boarding or the wild 1980s – each period of his life is woven into his artistic output, yet space and time are not approached in a linear manner. The photographer also traverses the boundary between the pictorial and the sculptural, as with “21MoslBuddJewChristHinDao. Unifaith. Damit wir uns endlich riechen können.“ („21MoslBuddJewChristHinDao. Unifaith. So we can finally get along.“) A perfume he created with world peace in mind. As such it is probably one of only a handful of perfumes, whose value extends that of a few ingredients. At the same time it is a demonstration of Josefsohn’s mastery of uniting the commercial with the artistic.
“I’d like to do something with Berlin again. Make it look good.” As the former art director of the Volksbühne, Josefsohn has a long-held engagement with the capital city. Looking at the photographer’s studio, it becomes apparent that the pieces on view are timeless, and that art receives a second life through its new location. And thus, it is not only his studio, which will be expanded, but also the frame of his works.
Photography by Peter Kaaden
Text by Mario Lombardo & Stephanie Baumgärtner