Mandatory military service and continued regional conflicts in Israel have made national icons out of young men and women in the armed forces. Adi Nes questions the appeal of militaristic prowess in photographs that are at once seductive and disarming. In this image, he eroticizes the already hypermasculine soldier with dramatic spotlighting. Shifting our focus from the harsh realities of the battlefield to the classical beauty of the Herculean body, the artist implicitly critiques his culture’s fetishization of war.