Adi Nes

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Untitled [2000]. A well-known photograph of sleeping Israeli boys, paradigmatic of Nes' style.

Adi Nes (born Kiryat Gat, 1966) is an Israeli photographer best known for his homoerotic photographs of Israeli soldiers and boys. In 2003 he did a feature for Vogue Hommes. Nes has given solo exhibitions at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and the Melkweg Gallery in Amsterdam, among others. His work has also shown in group exhibitions at the Hotel de Sully in Paris and the Jewish Museum in New York, among many others. He has been reviewed in The New York Times, the Financial Times, and others.^[1]

Nes' most famous piece recalls Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, replacing the characters with young male Israeli soldiers. A print sold at auction in Sotheby's for $102,000 in 2005.^[2]

Nes' early work tries to subvert the stereotype of the macho, masculine male Israeli by using homoeroticism and sleeping, vulnerable figures. He regularly uses dark-skinned Israeli models, who are often the subject of discrimination in Israel because they look like Arabs.^[3] The models' poses often evoke Caravaggio.

Nes lives and works in Tel-Aviv. His work is currently sold through Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City. In January 2007, he will premiere a new series echoing Biblical stories.^[4]