PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DAVID FRIBERG
Michael Friberg and Benjamin Rasmussen find a fresh way to explore the conflict in the Middle East. Part reportage, part editorial, they create a powerful new way of communication on a contemporary problem.
“The way that we shoot for magazines, you try to photograph a subject in a way that people are going to think they are important enough to read that story,” Rasmussen explains. “We have a visual language that we use to communicate the fact that somebody is important. We wanted to take that language and use that on a group of people that no one was really paying attention to.” He points to the cover of “By the Olive Trees” as an example; in it a handsome, young man stands holding an olive branch. His clothes fit well, a fashionable shirt unbuttoned to the chest, and he holds the branch carefully, looking away, but his gaze is troubled. Friberg shot it in natural light, but the key to their approach was spending quality time with their subjects and letting the photographs become an extension of that, instead of simply following someone around taking pictures.”
