Simon Lehner was born in 1996 and lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He is currently graduating in Photography at the University of Applied Arts of Vienna. With his series How far is a lightyear?, he won the Paris-Photo Carte Blanche Award 2018 + the Paris-Photo Maison Ruinart Prize and exhibited the series in Paris at the Gare du Nord and Grand Palais during Paris-Photo. He was nominated and presented his portfolio at the Plat(t)form Winterthur 2019 and was selected as one of 5 special mentions for his body of work. His ongoing book project Men don’t play was shortlisted for the Unseen Dummy Award in 2017. Previously, his work was featured in The British Journal of Photography, die Zeit, Ignant, L’Uomo Vogue, Numéro, Vice Magazine, and various others. Lehner has exhibited in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Russia and Austria.
Simon Lehner’s work comes from personal experiences and has a documentary core as it explores contemporary issues, social structures, psychology and its relation to current human and social developments through direct and embedded observation.
About ‘Men don’t play‘ – words by Simon Lehner:
Men don’t play / Men do play, which started in 2015 and can be defined as ongoing, investigates the concept of hyper-masculinity and basic instincts through a documentary core about authentic simulated war-zones while exploring the mediums fine line between perception and truthful depiction.
For four years I photographed a male-dominated subculture that simulates war – Weekends with 50 hours of no sleep and straight warfare, dummy weapons and plastic bullets, tanks, helicopters, explosive suicide belts connected to cellphones, real tactics and artificial deaths.
Through incorporated 3D generated pictures that reference video games and perform as lens-based images the series explores the mediums problematic aspect of authenticity and truthful depiction as the events on the ground develop into their own form of social reality.
Up to 1500 participants are fighting as terrorists and soldiers in real allied forces uniforms, use authentic military language and shout Arabic paroles to simulate war-zones like Iraq or Afghanistan while being in the forests of Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria and Poland.
Your own masculinity is put to the test on the field and idealized in this game titled Airsoft – However, under the surface of acting tough, vulnerability is noticeable as exhaustion, fear, injury and tenderness hover over the battlefield.