The Many Lives of Erik Kessels

by Erik Kessels (Photographer), Francesco Zanot (Text), Simon Baker (Text)

The Many Lives of Erik Kessels presents the highly anticipated first illustrated survey of this pioneering and influential curator, editor, and artist whose varied experiments with photography and photographic archives have allowed us to reconsider the medium’s vernacular and narrative possibilities in today’s inundated image landscape. People consume photographs, says Kessels, they don’t look at them anymore. This volume is a primer on how to look―and how to better understand the hybrid practice of this artist who defies categorization. Including more than twenty of the artist’s series and features essays by Simon Baker, Hans Aarsman, and curator Francesco Zanot, The Many Lives of Erik Kessels is published in conjunction with a major midcareer retrospective at CAMERA–Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin, Italy.

576 pages, Hardcover

Published April 15, 2017

About the author

Erik Kessels (1966) is a Dutch artist, designer and curator with a particular interest in photography, and creative director of KesselsKramer, an advertising agency in Amsterdam. Kessels and Johan Kramer established the "legendary and unorthodox" KesselsKramer in 1996, and KesselsKramer Publishing, their Amsterdam-based publishing house, both of which they continue to run.

He is "best known as a book publisher specialising in absurdist found photography", extensively publishing his and others' found and vernacular photography. Notable works include the long-running series Useful Photography, which he edits with others, and his own In Almost Every Picture. Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "His magazine, Useful Photography, forgoes art and documentary for images that are purely functional. ... Humour is the unifying undercurrent here as it is in KesselsKramer's series of photo books, In Almost Every Picture".