Internationally renowned Israeli-born photographer Rafael Fuchs has always used his art to push boundaries and highlight the absurdities of modern life — even during wartime.
Called to serve in Lebanon in 1983 while he was still an art student at Jerusalem’s prestigious Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design brought his avant-garde style to the battlefield.
“I started taking picture showing how ridiculous war is,” Fuchs told The Post in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Fuchs began subverting the war photography genre by taking a series of self-portraits, in typical battle scenes, donned in Japanese Butoh-inspired theatrical makeup to highlight his anxiety about serving.
“Where does it say in the Israeli army rule book that a soldier cannot perform his duties with makeup on?” Fuchs had asked his then-commanding officer.
Following graduation and a stint in Paris where he was noticed by the eminent curator Francois Hebel, Fuchs emigrated to New York, where he was immediately enchanted by the city’s “spontaneity.”
“It was hot. It was May 1st. I was sweating … I was like, ‘This is my place.’”
After struggling to make a name for himself in the Big Apple, Fuchs’ first big break came when he was hired by Entertainment Weekly to photograph Kathy Najimy in 1994.
“After five years of shooting this and shooting that, it was like I was scratching behind the table. And all of a sudden I feel like I am on the table. Still, there is a big mountain here but at least I can see.”
This began Fuchs’ career as a celebrity portrait photographer. He is currently showcasing some of his favorite snaps at his show “Luminaries” at the Printique gallery in Park Slope, which opened on Thursday.
“Luminaries” features portraits of Pink, Beyoncé with Destiny’s Child, David Blaine, Mary J. Blige and others — some never before seen.
A portrait of the original cast of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which included a gay pride-style American flag that was censored in the Advocate in 2001, will be on display in its unaltered form.
“I like him the best, Jai Rodriquez, he’s the most outgoing … he’s always hustling,” Fuchs told The Post.
One of the biggest “Luminaries” to grace the walls of the Printique gallery is Beyoncé — and the New York shoot almost didn’t happen.
Fuchs was supposed to photograph Destiny’s Child, but was told the session was canceled because Beyoncé needed to fly home to Houston to see her dentist.
In response, Fuchs packed his bags and flew to Texas.
“Her mother at the time was doing her hair,” Fuchs recalled to The Post, “Beyoncé … has [a] real presence, just [a] kind of unexplainable presence. I almost had a heartbeat taken away.”
During a shoot with Mary J. Blige, meanwhile, the “Real Love” singer began contorting her face in an expression that Fuchs thought was a deliberate artistic choice that worked perfectly for the piece.
“I thought she was going through some emotions. She looked at me right in the eyes and she’s like, ‘This is the time of the month.’”
“She was in pain and she was still doing the photoshoot,” he went on. “Sometimes you shoot somebody and you don’t know where it’s coming from and this can be very simple physical pain.”
Fuchs later tried to merge his celebrity portrait style with his earlier avant-garde war photography aesthetic when he photographed Colin Powell for Life magazine.
What Fuchs tries to capture in his work with “Luminaries” is their shared humanity.
“It is very fulfilling to meet somebody that you really appreciate, what they are doing … you’re one on one with the person. You’re looking in their eyes,” he said. “It’s satisfying to get to know this person and at the end of the day to realize that people are people. As much as they are in the limelight people still have insecurities. Sometimes in really, small frivolous things.”
Not every shoot has gone exactly the way Fuchs has planned, however.
“Burt Reynolds walks into the studio and one of the sets is haystacks,” Fuchs said. “And I put a painted background of either sunshine or sunset, I saw him as a cowboy … he’s walking in the studio and he sees the thing with the hay and he’s like, ‘No.’”
He added: “People have their own concepts and sometimes my concepts are different than theirs.”
Thankfully, Fuchs had another set on hand, and Reynolds insisted he be photographed in the clothes he arrived in, which luckily worked perfectly for the shoot.
Sometimes photo concepts would arrive totally by accident, as was the case with Geraldo Rivera. The TV host arrived to the shoot from a boat — and was shirtless. Fuchs took that opportunity to take candids before the real photoshoot began.
“My stylist [told] me, ‘What shirt should we use for him?’ ‘Don’t show him anything,’ I tell her. ‘I want to get him like this first.’”
The Israeli photographer managed to capture a shirtless snap of Rivera years before he would go viral for posting shirtless selfies on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Like Beyoncé, Fuchs worked with “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling just as she was becoming a household name.
“I’m shooting her for People magazine, the ‘Most Intriguing People of the Year 2000,’ she’s one of them… I speak with the publicist and she says she’s really shy. It’s gonna be really quick in and out … And after I read the book I was like, ‘No way … she deserves more. And I want to have more because she has so much imagination.’”
When Rowling arrived on set she was an eager subject, even willing to shoot ideas that Fuchs’ own stylist couldn’t accomplish. One such example was to spike the author’s hair up in the front like a unicorn.
Fuchs’ photograph of Rowling is now featured in the National Portrait Gallery of London.
Sometimes Fuchs would spend a day with a subject only to have his photos pulled from a magazine due to unforeseen circumstances.
“David Blaine was a shoot for Vanity Fair. This is right before he has this idea that somebody was supposed to shoot him and he was supposed to catch the bullet in his mouth with a metal cup. That is why I did this fake blood thing,” he explained to The Post.
However, by the end of the day, Blaine chickened out of doing the trick outdoors and the photos were never published by the magazine. The magician would later perform the stunt on a closed set.
Fuchs’ early wartime photography wasn’t the only time the photographer had to worry about incoming fire too.
“Master P … so I’m shooting him for Source magazine … so we land in Houston and he greets us at the airport with some of his friends, and they give us bulletproof jackets,” he recalled. “I ask him, ‘Are we in danger?’ He says, ‘You never know.’”
Fuchs’ gallery will also include rarely seen pictures of Pink taken for her first-ever major album photoshoot.
Fuchs was happy with the result, but claims her label was unhappy that the singer used her own makeup stylist from Philly.
“They decided to hold off on Pink’s explosive authenticity,” Fuchs told The Post of the shelved project.
Fuchs’ “Luminaries” show can be viewed at the Printique gallery in Brooklyn on Mondays 9-5 p.m. ET and Thursdays 9-7 p.m. until February 29.
