Erik Kessels

Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, designer and curator with a particular interest in photography, and co-founder of KesselsKramer, an advertising agency in Amsterdam. Kessels and Johan Kramer established the "legendary and unorthodox"

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".

He collects photographs he finds on flea markets, fairs, in junk shops, and online, and appropriates and re-contextualises them. about creativity on command, Failed it (2016) about turning mistakes into brilliant ideas and The Many Lives of Erik Kessels (2017), an overview of his work so far. 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." 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."

In 2015 Kessels was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, for Unfinished Father, along with Trevor Paglen, Laura El-Tantawy, and Tobias Zielony.

Kessels' exhibition Destroy My Face, as part of the BredaPhoto 2020 festival in the Netherlands, was met with widespread criticism on social media of misogyny, and was eventually removed by the venue, Pier15 Skatepark. The work, which Kessels describes as an "interactive work", consists of composite portraits created by an algorithm based on images on the internet of people who have undergone plastic and cosmetic surgery. The photos of women's faces were printed as sticker folie and affixed to the floor surface of the skatepark, where visitors could contribute to the destruction of the faces through the activity of skating over the prints.

After the festival opened on 9 September 2020, an open letter to the festival and the skatepark, signed by artists, designers, photographers, and other creatives under the name We Are Not A Playground, described the work and its implementation as misogynistic. Within only a few days, as of 14 September 2020, the letter had collected more than 2000 signatures.

KesselsKramer and KesselsKramer Publishing KesselsKramer is an independent, advertising agency established by Kessels and Johan Kramer in 1996. It is based in Amsterdam with offices in London and Los Angeles, and a staff of about fifty.

KesselsKramer has been called "legendary and unorthodox". and "I Amsterdam" for the city of Amsterdam. In Almost Every Picture 7. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2008. Collected and edited by Kessels and Joep Eijkens. . Photographs by Ria van Dijk. Text by Joep Eijkens. In Almost Every Picture 8. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2009. Collected and edited by Kessels. Photographs by Hironori Akutagawa. . Text by Christian Bunyan. In Almost Every Picture 9. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2010. Collected and edited by Kessels. Text by Christian Bunyan. . In Almost Every Picture 10. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2011. Collected by Michel Campeau. Edited and designed by Kessels. Photographs by Jean-Paul Cuerrier. . In Almost Every Picture 6–10. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2011. Collected and edited by Kessels. Five books in a slipcase. In Almost Every Picture 6 includes a DVD containing a music piece composed by Scanner, and images from the book. Edition of 100 copies. In Almost Every Picture 11. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2012. Discovered by Gijs van den Berg. Edited and designed by Kessels. Photographs by Fred Clark. . In Almost Every Picture 12. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2013. Edited and designed by Kessels. . In Almost Every Picture 13. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2014. Edited and designed by Kessels. In Almost Every Picture 14. Amsterdam: KesselsKramer, 2015. Discovered by Toon Michiels. Edited and designed by Kessels. .

Publications with contributions by Kessels Daido Moriyama – Journey For Something. Reflex Amsterdam, 2012. . Photographs by Daidō Moriyama. With essays in english by Kessels and Matthias Harder. (Mis) Understanding Photography: Werks und Manifeste. = Works and Manifestos. Essen, Germany: Museum Folkwang; Göttingen: Steidl, 2014. . Photographs by various photographers, short texts, and introductions to each photographer written by themselves, in German. Includes examples of Kessels' Mother Nature: Photo's [sic] of Females Flourishing (2014). Catalogue of an exhibition held at Museum Folkwang. Photobook Phenomenon. Munich: Prestel; CCCB/RM/Fundació Foto Colectania, 2017. A box set of eight booklets of writing, one each by Moritz Neumüller and Lesley Martin, Markus Schaden and Frederic Lezmi, Martin Parr, Horacio Fernández, Ryuichi Kaneko, Gerry Badger, Kessels ("Fascinations and Failures"), and Irene de Mendoza and Neumüller. .

Film by Kessels Loud & Clear: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Marlene Dumas, Erik Kessels/KesselsKramer. Loud & Clear 3. Amsterdam: Bifrons Foundation, 2002. . DVD. Includes My Daughter by Marlene Dumas, with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto (3:20) and My Sister by Kessels, with music by Sakamoto. Made for Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England.

Exhibitions (selected) My Sister short film shown alongside Marlene Dumas' My Daughter, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England. Five Strange Family Albums: Alessandra Sanguinetti/ Emmet Gowin/ Erik Kessels/ Ralph Eugene Meatyard/ Sadie Benning, Le Bal, Paris, January–April 2011. Included My Sister by Kessels, The Clearest Pictures were at First Strange (1965–1973) by Emmet Gowin, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater (1970–1972) by Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Flat is Beautiful (1998) by Sadie Benning, and The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams (1999–2010) by Alessandra Sanguinetti. Album Beauty, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2012. (Mis) Understanding Photography: Werks und Manifeste, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, June–August 2014. Photographs by various photographers including examples of Kessels' Mother Nature: Photo's [sic] of Females Flourishing. Unfinished Father, Fotografia Europea international festival, Reggio Emilia, Italy, May 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2016, included Kessels' Unfinished Father, The Photographers' Gallery, London, April–July 2016. Deutsche Börse Photography Prize shortlist with Kessels, Laura El-Tantawy, Trevor Paglen and Tobias Zielony. Destroy My Face, Skatehal Pier15, part of BredaPhoto 2020, Breda (2020). After criticism, was taken offline.

Collections Kessels' work is held in the following public collection: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, holds In Almost Every Picture 7