Rafael Heygster
“I died 22 times”
EUROPE, POLAND, BROZEK, 12.05.2018: Some "playing fields" include a separate vehicle fleet with civilian and military vehicles.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 20.02.2019: young soldiers marching in their dress uniforms on the International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi.
EUROPE, POLAND, BROZEK, 12.05.2018: High school graduate Eddy P. was brought by his mother to an airsoft "game". He has not often participated in such games and has only one Airsoft pistol.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 18.02.2019: Employees of the armaments company "Ukrainian Armor are waiting for customers at their stand at IDEX.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 20.02.2019: At the opening ceremony of the IDEX in Abu Dhabi, the technical innovations of the defense industry will be presented to potential customers in a 20-minute play using pyrotechnics, actors and multimedia storytelling.
EUROPE, GERMANY, HAMBURG, 28.12.2016: "Airsoft player" Len with girlfriend Nina and the boxer Diego in his apartment in Hamburg. His great-grandmother was killed by the Nazis in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He says "playing war" with airsoft weapons is just a game for him and has nothing to do with reality.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 18.02.2019: A trade fair visitor attends a demonstration of combat aircraft and warships at the International Defense Exhibition and Conference in Abu Dhabi. Most trade fair visitors and exhibitors do not want to show their faces.
EUROPE, GERMANY, MAHLWINKEL, 05.05.2018: Makabre Staging: Trash bags filled with straw are supposed to imitate body bags. They are part of an airsoft role-playing-game in Mahlwinkel.
EUROPE, POLAND, BROZEK, 12.05.2018: The secret highlight of "Operation Endzeit - Rolling Steel" is the appearance of a stripper on the last evening. Their appearance was already days before topic of conversation among the participants.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 18.02.2019: Business people of various backgrounds gather information about a vehicle equipped with machine guns at IDEX.
EUROPE, POLAND, BROZEK, 12.05.2018: In a former bunker on an Airsoft playground in Poland on the eve of the game, the participants sit together, drink beer and listen to music.
EUROPE, POLAND, BROZEK, 12.05.2018: The fleet of a Polish airsoft "playing field" at Brozek also includes a discarded, Russian T55 tank. For the fun of the participants round trips are offered with the combat vehicle.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 18.02.2019: Visitors of the IDEX film manneuvers of combat aircarfts with their mobile phones
EUROPE, CZECH REPUBLIC, BRNO 15.09.2019: Two visitors of an Arms Fair in Czech republic sit together at a booth. On Arms fairs, there always delicious canapés are served
EUROPE, CZECH REPUBLIC, BRNO 15.09.2019: Two spectators watch a life demonstration on the "Family Day" at an armaments fair in the Czech Republic. The staged firefight with blank cartridges and smoke grenades also involves the actors being "shot." After the demostration, they stand up again and leave the arena alive.
EUROPE, GERMANY, KOBLENZ, 10.02.2018: Manuel K. works as a gardener and landscape designer. He has been operating Airsoft for about a year, after a friend took him away. Because one moves in the "Airsoft games" in nature, he would find Airsoft better than video games.
EUROPE, GERMANY, HENSTEDT-ROHLSDORF, 17.12.2016: Matthias V. during an "airsoft game" during the Christmas season. He has leased the area and organizes "games" as well as workshops whose content is based on military training.
EUROPE, GERMNAY, ESSEN, 29.05.2018: The carpenter Jan L. comes from a family of hunters and grew up with weapons. He is a gun guy and can disassemble and reassemble Airsoft pistols and guns in a short time.
ASIA; UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, ABU DHABI, 17.02.2019: A manufacturer of medical products advertises its products at IDEX with the help of a bloodied mannequin..02.2019: A marching band leaves the stage after their appearance during the opening ceremony of the IDEX. A security monitor meanwhile the viewers.
EUROPE, POLAND, BROZEK, 12.05.2018: Team airsoft players try to drive out a sniper in the scrub with smoke grenades.
Project Description
My home country, Germany, has officially been at peace for more than 70 years. The photographic work “I died 22 times” shows and questions the way our culture deals with “warfare” outside real battlefields. War does not only manifest itself as a military conflict on battlefields with clear physical fronts, but appears more abstractly in our society in various places.
“I died 22 times” deals with the question “Where does war begin?”
The series combines motifs from different scenarios. Images of weapons fairs (war as a business) are combined with motives of Airsoft, a dubious leisure activity (war as a game), people who play video war games and military marches (war as a demonstration of national strength). All scenarios shown have one thing in common: “War” is staged as something entertaining and at the same time harmless. Nobody dies. War is thereby made consumable.
Biography
Nationality: German
Rafael Heygster (1990) is a freelance photographer based in Hannover and Bremen, Germany.
From 2010 to 2015 he studied cultural anthropology and political science at the University of Hamburg. Since 2015, he has been studying photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover. In 2017, he interned as a photographer at Weser Kurier, the newspaper of his hometown, Bremen, and worked as an assistant for lêmrich (Kiên Hoang Lê and Alina Emrich) in Frankfurt.
In his work, he focuses on the relationship between individuals and their social, cultural and ecological environment.
Visit Website
Share this: