The Many Lives of Erik Kessels
Erik Kessels
Aperture
English
Texts by Francesco Zanot, Hans Aarsman, Simon Baker, and Sandra S. Phillips
Edited by Lesley Martin
Hardcover with slipcase
First Edition
576 pages
135 x 215 mm
2017
ISBN 9781597114165
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 mid-career retrospective at Camera: Italian Centre for Photography in Turin, Italy.
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
Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online.
aperture.org
