Erik Kessels

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 1995, 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".

Kessels was born in Roermond, Netherlands.

He collects photographs he finds in flea markets, fairs, junk shops, and online, and appropriates and re-contextualises them. He extensively publishes, through KesselsKramer 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 "Kessels made his name as a champion of found photography, seeking out discarded family albums in order to show us anew their mundane beauty and oddness. He is best known for his magazine Useful Photography, which celebrates images of the purely functional, and his series of books In Almost Every Picture, which home in on motifs that appear accidentally in amateur photo albums – such as wayward fingers. ... More recently, Kessels has become “more and more interested in the stories of the photographs” rather than the images themselves." His most successful publication is In Almost Every Picture 7.Parr and Badger include In Almost Every Picture 4 (2006) in the third volume of their photobook history. In it they say "Erik Kessels is one of the guiding lights behind the magazine Useful Photography, edited by a group of (mainly) Dutch photographers in a witty yet serious manner. In his ongoing series In Almost Every Picture, he continues his exploration of the found snapshot as a solo author. The idea in this series is to gather together a group of snapshots devoted to a theme and treat them as if the photographers were vernacular "conceptual" artists – which in a sense they are."

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