Adi Nes' series, Soldiers at Masculinities: Liberation through Photography

Israeli artist Adi Nes’s (b. 1966, Israel) evocative colour photographs often recall scenes from art history while also exploring homoeroticism. In his meticulously staged series Soldiers, for which he photographed young men performing as infantry soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces, Nes makes clear the connection between hegemonic masculinity and the masculinity of the Jewish combat soldier, a figure perceived in Israeli culture as an emblem of good citizenship.

His cinematic images of soldiers sleeping, resting, smoking and generally larking around are all grounded in his own experiences as a gay Mizrahi Jewish man. Nes not only infuses his images of the military with homoeroticism but also reveals the strong homosocial bonds that exist between soldiers. As well as inscribing the queer body into the military imagination, Nes also cast an amputee to pose in one of the images in the series, further breaking down the narrow confines of military-sanctioned masculinity.

What does it mean to be a man today? The Barbican's Masculinities: Liberation through Photography considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day.