Not Posing, Catching Fire: Last Days for Bob Jones and “587 Blitze” at Fotografiska Berlin

That familiar action repeated billions of times every day in the social media era: A filtered smile, the right angle, and a fresh selfie instantly entering digital circulation… The practice of self-portraiture has never been this democratized throughout history, and precisely for this reason, never so homogenized and mundane. However, Berlin-based photographer Bob Jones takes this act beyond being a sterile pose, transforming it into a realm of physical pain, exhaustion, and ritual.

Exhibited within the scope of Fotografiska Berlin’s Emerging Berlin program—which makes room for rising young talents—“587 Blitze” completes its exhibition marathon, which began on June 5, on August 11, 2026.

587 Flashes, 587 Exposures: The Fragmented Body of Self-Portraiture

A full 587 flashes and 587 separate exposures… Bob Jones’s series re-answers the questions “What is a self-portrait, who is the person in front of and behind the camera?” through a radical physical process. Rather than standing passively in front of the camera, Jones virtually merges with it and confronts the intense explosion moment of light; while multiplying the visibility of the body, he simultaneously shatters it into pieces.

Each flash of light striking in the middle of darkness leaves behind not a sweet smile on the surface, but a dark trace obtained through the intensity of light, the posture of the body, and the exhaustion brought by repetition. Drawing nourishment particularly from Berlin’s queer and body-focused art scene, Jones presents a harsh and raw objection to selfie culture with this personal and conceptual reckoning.

Institutional Support and Two Different Languages of Flash

“587 Blitze” stands as one of the most remarkable fruits this year of the Emerging Berlin program, strengthened by Fotografiska Berlin in partnership with IFA Berlin and Volkswagen R. Providing an editorial and institutional showcase for the city’s rising new voices, this program carries Bob Jones into both a space of personal recognition and right into the center of contemporary body debates.

The spatial context in which the exhibition is set up is also highly provocative. Currently housed in Fotografiska Berlin’s building in Mitte, the “Why These?” exhibition by street photography legend Bruce Gilden is also taking place. The Gilden flash, descending suddenly upon strangers’ faces on the street as a tool of confrontation, meets Jones’s internal ritual of etching his own body 587 times with light under the same roof. Two different generations, two radical flash languages…

NO-26 Editor’s Art Route Note

If you find yourself on the Mitte side until August 11, don’t forget to step inside Fotografiska Berlin. Watching Bob Jones—who turns his own body into an experimental space with 587 flashes in the selfie era—alongside Bruce Gilden, the tough figure of street photography, in the same building will remind you once again of photography’s power of “light and confrontation”!