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Kobi Israel

Photographer Extraordinaire
By Stian Nilsen

Kobi Israel was born in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 3, 1970. He had his first artistic inspiration in Tel Aviv while acting in a leading role when he was 14 years old. At that time, photography was still unknown to him.

Kobi finished his obligatory 3 years service in the Israeli Army in 1992 and began traveling around the world. He managed to get work as a flight attendant for "El-Al" in 1994 and was more or less living "between airports". At that time he started to get "obsessed" with photography, and carried his camera anywhere he went. "It was the only tool that could register the strong emotions that went through me whenever I arrived to a new place", he explains. 

While discovering the world, he never stopped shooting photos. Back then he followed his heart, taking shots based on his instincts. "Follow your heart is the best advice I was ever given", he says. "It was a primary and instant way to respond to and to express the overwhelming emotions inside me". He was so afraid of loosing the immediate respons to the surroundings- afraid that planning anything would not capture the moment properly - to kind of loose the power of the instinct. 

Now, looking back, he understands that what he was doing was trying to capture the modern life in modern surroundings. Then he discovered the book of Walter Benjamin about Boudlier. Kobi thinks that Walter Benjamin puts in words what he himself is doing with images. If Kobi was to pick just one artist, past or present, to have a 15 minutes' conversation with, he would most definitively go with Benjamin. "I understood that I was capturing in a poetic way the urban life that we are all living in 3 main levels" he says. "The way we yearn to live, the actual life and the subconscious ".

But his greatest inspiration he still gets from Nan Golding and Sophie Calle. "I think the greatest influence I got is the way of trying to capture an identity and the understanding that life is the most important subject in art", Kobi says. "I think I am trying to use the same artistic "attitude" , but my subjects are different", Kobi explains. He also points out that curiosity is what motivates him in every day life. 

In 1996, Kobi started to study in the school of Visual arts in Tel-Aviv. He felt that while becoming more "professional" he also lost the innocent instinct of when & where to press the button. Yet, still he gained a new progressive style in his photography. "I now need to explore life in a different way, by analyzing, asking questions and not by responding with instincts", Kobi explains to us. He thinks his questions are becoming more "intellectual" and he is trying to criticize and to make a clear point of view. His current subjects of interest are "Gay life style" and "Urban surroundings". Kobi started dealing with "gay art" only a few months ago. What triggered him to start combining his sexuality into art, was a broken relationship.

On what it is like being gay in Israel Kobi says ; "The biggest conflict I had as an Israeli gay person, was when I was 18 and I joined the army. I needed to define my masculinity to fit the army patterns and what society expects from a soldier. It was 1988, and being gay wasn't as easy as today. I remember I needed "to prove my masculinity" to society, and most of all to myself, and I did this externally by buying a very big motorcycle and a gun(!), and I wanted to become an officer. But those days are long gone. In fact, a straight friend of him who was trying to get out of his national duty went to his army medical exam with a face full of makeup and told the army doctor he had a voracious sexual appetite for men. The doctor responded, “Yeah, so what? I do too.” 

As for his family - that was personally one of the highlights of his "coming out". "They all love me and accept me in the most natural way. My mother loves my ex-boyfriend. She once joined me and him on a vacation in Province. It was great", Kobi tells us. Not only his mother, but all his family miss his ex-boyfriend. "They keep asking about him and inviting him to their home. My mother even cooks for him and they treat him like one of the family. I really appreciate them for this", Kobi says.

When asked who would be his dream model, Kobi explains that he likes to choose his subjects after knowing them a little. He is interested in "real people" and not "celebrities" etc. "I like to be able to be very close to different subjects for 3-6 month and to document their life. To define them as individuals and be able to capture the diversity and the uniqueness in each one of them", Kobi says. And that's probably one of the reasons his art is so good- his pictures are different in a wonderfully unique way.

Kobi just published his first photography book through Bruno Gmunder publication (Germany). The title of the book is "KOBI ISRAEL VIEWS" and can be purchased online at Amazon.com.