This Israeli dad takes absurd photos of his twin boys

Most new parents barely have time to breathe — or sleep — during the first year of parenthood.

But in the small town of Shlomi in northern Israel, Guy and Dalit Vainer, wanted to document their new status as the parents of Barak and Yanai, identical 18-month-old twin boys.

Besides the endless diaper changes, feedings and sleep training, Guy Vainer, an X-ray technician by trade, decided to forgo smartphone snaps and embark instead on a somewhat unusual photography project featuring his twin sons.

In Vainer’s series of shots, all staged and extensively photoshopped, his boys are photographed flying through the air as acrobats, getting tattooed, caged and surrounded by dogs, playing chess, wielding power tools, hanging from the clothes rack… you get the idea.

“It just grew and grew,” said Vainer, whose father encouraged him to dig his “$5,000 equipment out of the storeroom.” “There’s a lot of humor in the pictures even though they’re just little babies. That’s what makes it interesting, it’s not just them playing. There’s cynicism and humor in each one.”

That’s for sure. The Vainers — he’s 32, she’s 26 — have staged their young twins in the iconic Queen album cover, as young world conquerers staging an attack, even drinking beers in a bar.

Each photo takes about half an hour of actual photography, said Vainer, but the total preparation can be much more time-consuming. The couple often buys costumes or props online, and staging can take hours.

Their families love the results, and both sets of grandparents are on board, often lending their dogs — the young Vainers have two of their own — or help in staging a shoot.

Some of the photographs are intensely complicated, like The Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here” album cover, which took a total of four hours.

It required extensive photoshopping, with one of the thumbs for the handshake taken from an entirely different picture.

Not that Vainer is complaining; he loves the project and its subjects.

While the Vainers are receiving a tremendous amount of publicity for the photos, their goal is to create memorable photos of Yanai and Barak for the boys to look back on — and laugh at — their early years.

“It’s not a publicity stunt. I never expected this kind of exposure,” said Vainer.

Still, with 77 photos to date and another 160 ideas in the pipeline, Vainer is thinking about a book or even two, considering all the behind-the-scenes photos that don’t make it to the Vainer Twin Instagram feed or Facebook, which Dalit Vainer handles, posting each picture with a caption, in English.

“I don’t want to be known as a photographer,” he said. “I’m a dad who’s taking the best possible photos of my sons, and I hope that when they bring these pictures to school for a project in ten years, that they’ll appreciate it.”