Daniel Josefsohn | Unseen

To ›Die Zeit‹, Josefsohn was »the greatest and most brilliant punk in the world of photography.« The ›Süddeutsche Zeitung‹ called him »a berserker with a camera, speeding in the fast lane of the image flood highway.«

Josefsohn first rose to fame in the early 1990s with his legendary MTV campaign ›Miststück‹ (Bitch). Later, he developed a strikingly, disturbing, humorous visual language through his posters for Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre and his photo series for Tempo, Jetzt Magazin, SZ-Magazin, and Zeit Magazin: direct, immediate, uninhibited—always observing from a distance, yet constantly ready to intervene in the scene and never leaving chance entirely up to chance.

His vivid contribution to the visual identity of a generation that was escapist, hedonistic, desperate, and at the same time megalomaniac was only possible because he was always part of it. He never shied away from diving headfirst into its highs and lows—if only to hold it all at bay with the lens of his camera.

When Josefsohn died in 2016 at the age of 53, he left behind a photographic legacy that feels like a single ecstatic journey through the turn of the millennium. Alongside iconic images etched into the collective memory, this legacy contains countless previously unseen photographs. Now that his archive has been largely processed, Crone Berlin is presenting a first-ever selection of these ›hidden treasures‹ during Berlin Art Week. Handpicked by Ingo Taubhorn, they reveal both Josefsohn’s unmistakable visual signature and a fresh perspective on his artistic output.

During his lifetime, Josefsohn’s work was shown at the Kunstverein Hamburg, the German Historical Museum in Berlin, the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, the City Museum of Haifa, and the Ruhrtriennale. His works are included in several notable collections, including the Boros Collection (Berlin), the Jewish Museum Berlin, and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main.