Daniel Josefsohn: Okay, DJ

Daniel Josefsohn: Okay, DJ, published by Hatje Cantz in 2014, is the first monograph on a photographer whose work moved between art and commerce without settling comfortably in either. Across 160 pages and 88 photographs, the softcover volume gathers a selection from the ZEITmagazin photo column Josefsohn made with his partner Karin Müller after his 2012 stroke, together with a cross-section of his wider output.

The column joins a personal account of changed circumstances with the photographer’s established taste for disruption. Josefsohn’s public work combined irreverence, jokes and political challenge; the autobiographical project brings that voice into contact with the consequences of his 2012 stroke. The selection moves between playful material and more difficult experiences. Its importance within the book is the connection it makes between a recognisable photographic attitude and a period of profound personal change.

Josefsohn’s earlier reputation rested on the Miststück campaign he created for MTV in the 1990s, followed by work for numerous magazines; from 2010 onward his photographs shaped the publicity campaigns of Berlin’s Volksbühne. These commissions provide context for the wider selection and the personal photo column, tracing a practice that moved between advertising imagery, institutional promotion and personal observation.

The German-English edition includes texts by Karin Müller, Klaus Honnef and Nadine Barth, with design by Mirko Borsche and Tania Parovic. For a collector, the book connects a photo column made under exceptional circumstances with a wider selection of Josefsohn’s work. Published in 2014, two years before his death, the monograph records both his established public practice and the personal project developed with Müller, offering a specific point of entry into the relationship between the two.

In his recent work Daniel Josefsohn (1961–2016) has man­aged to maintain the precarious balancing act be­tween provocation and humor, between irony and political incitement with such skill that he is able to generate both a sense of discomfort and adoration among viewers. His photographs challenge our cus­tomary visual expectations and seem to effortlessly maneuver between art and commerce. After the leg­endary Miststück campaign that he created for the MTV music channel in the nineties, Josefsohn worked for numerous magazines and from 2010 on­ward his photographs defined the publicity cam­paigns of the Volksbühne in Berlin. After suffering a stroke in 2012, he worked with his partner Karin Müller to document the before and after in a photo column for the ZEITmagazin—which reflected the contrasts between levity and gravity, the debased and the beautiful. In addition to a selection of the best photographs of the column, this volume presents a cross-section of his entire work.

Designed by: Mirko Borsche, Tania Parovic
Texts by: Karin Müller, Prof. Klaus Honnef, Nadine Barth
German, English
October 2014, 160 Pages , 88 Photos
softcover
100mm x 100mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-3881-1

Publisher page editorial text:
| The first monograph on this provocative German photographer
In his recent work Daniel Josefsohn (1961–2016) has man­aged to maintain the precarious balancing act be­tween provocation and humor, between irony and political incitement with such skill that he is able to generate both a sense of discomfort and adoration among viewers. His photographs challenge our cus­tomary visual expectations and seem to effortlessly maneuver between art and commerce. After the leg­endary Miststück campaign that he created for the MTV music channel in the nineties, Josefsohn worked for numerous magazines and from 2010 on­ward his photographs defined the publicity cam­paigns of the Volksbühne in Berlin. After suffering a stroke in 2012, he worked with his partner Karin Müller to document the before and after in a photo column for the ZEITmagazin—which reflected the contrasts between levity and gravity, the debased and the beautiful. In addition to a selection of the best photographs of the column, this volume presents a cross-section of his entire work.

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