Brussels Beauties
Erik Kessels
Kesselskramer
English
Softcover
Edition of 500
40 pages
170 x 230 mm
2010
ISBN 9789070478339
The third in the found photography series collecting images of attractiveness from around the world. After Bangkok Beauties and Bombay Beauties, Kessels focuses on the smaller scale story of one Belgian girl. Unaware of her own prettiness, she turns a pensive face to the camera in image after image. The repetitive pictures build a quietly intense atmosphere, like stills from an old movie. We are left to speculate on almost everything about her: age, period when the photos were made, exact location (the Belgian capital of the title is absent inside). Only the consistency of the ambiguous expression is a certainty. A mini Mona Lisa, she seems alternately sadly happy, and happily sad, a strangely complex and mature set of emotions for one of her years.
About the Artist
Erik Kessels was born in 1966; he lives and works in Amsterdam. He has presented numerous exhibitions at Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia (2015), Centquatre-Paris (2014), Les Rencontres d’Arles (2014), the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2013), Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco (2014–15) and the Images – Festival des Arts Visuels in Vevey (2014). He might not shoot pictures himself, but the Dutch art director and collector Erik Kessels has certainly changed the way we think about photography. As a curator of amateur photography, he’s elevated discarded images to gallery status, finding beauty and insight in pictures of, say, 20th century German police uniforms, or one woman’s lifelong love of fairground shooting galleries.
erikkessels.com
About the Publisher
KesselsKramer is a company which aspires to do things differently in the field of communications. KesselsKramer Publishing is an extension of this restless attitude. In images and words, it finds new ways of expressing creativity through printed matter.
kesselskramerpublishing.com
