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Saturday, 1 April 2006 | Elif Sungur
Loving Your Pictures by Erik Kessels
From April 9 until May 28, 2006 the exhibition Loving Your Pictures by Erik Kessels will be on view at the Centraal Museum Utrecht in The Netherlands. Eight photo series will be presented consisting of photo material collected and edited by Erik Kessels. These photographs, which the original makers did not intend as 'works of art', will now take on new meanings as they are exhibited in a new context within the museum.
Looking with New Eyes
For Loving Your Pictures, Kessels has selected eight series and projects of found photographs from his projects and archive. The origin of the photos is very diverse. Some examples of objects in the exhibition will include a series of posed photographs that were made to catalogue German police uniforms from the 70's newly titled Models. The intention of the photographs was to demonstrate to police officers all over Germany how their particular uniforms should be worn. Also featured will be photographs from select weblogs. These weblogs are digital albums where people collect images of a concurrent theme or subject such as the popular Japanese rabbit Oolong who was followed all over the world as the rabbit's life was documented and photographed online. The series Wonder consists of submitted 'discarded' photographs that were 'rescued for viewing'. The photographs were acquired through an advertisement asking people to send in their unwanted snapshots. In the images we see accidents made by the camera or photographer that result in interesting objects apart from their first intended purpose. One of the in almost every picture series presents photographs taken at night in the wilderness. The images are taken by a motion detector that opens the shutter of a hidden camera instantly when something walks by. The result is a series of photographic self-portraits taken by deer in a world we seldom see. The initial purpose of the photographs makes the images slightly haunting. By presenting these images in the context of a museum, Kessels gives his found material a completely new meaning. These photographic series will give the audience a chance to create order in a chaos, to make a story out of fragments of information while also allowing them to look at their own photographs 'with new eyes'.
Photos as Objets Trouvés
The found object is not new in Art History. Marcel Duchamp became known because of the shock effect his ready-mades created. By isolating an object and giving it a place in a museum, for another fabricated purpose, objects take on a new meaning or significance. The collected work of Erik Kessels also questions matters such as authenticity, originality, authorship, craftsmanship and the role of the image in current society. While impressive glossy, professional photos dominate many magazines, today everyone is a photographer. Images are exchanged evermore rapidly aided by the development of digital photography. Every picture can be experienced in many different ways: as a memory of a special moment, as a registration of an event or as a piece of art with aesthetic value. The central focus of Loving Your Pictures is all these different layers in which we experience photography.
'Vernacular photography is important because it is open to any kind of interpretation. It can be refashioned, re-imagined, re-sequenced, made into a multitude of different stories. Photographs and assemblages of images made for a particular market can de reinterpreted in the light of cultural knowledge and their meaning can be radically changed.'
'Though found and vernacular photography has existed at the margins of collection and curating for many years, there is evidence (partly perhaps because of the mainstream interventions of figures such as Erik Kessels) that is rapidly becoming more central in contemporary visual culture.'
Val Williams, Eye Magazine, vol.14, spring 2005
Erik Kessels asks us to look again, to question the criteria of images and their making while letting loose our strict formula and opening our eyes to many possibilities and many visual miracles that occur with the spreading use of the camera.
Erik Kessels
Erik Kessels (1966, NL) is creative director of communication agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam. Kessels regularly has editorials in magazines such as iM (Identity Matters) and BON International. He has published several books and series such as: Instant Men, Useful Photography and in almost every picture. As curator he was responsible for the opening exhibition DutchDelight for Foam (Photography Museum Amsterdam), the exhibition Confrontation at the Institute Néerlandais in Paris and he contributed to Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France. For the DVD art project Loud & Clear he worked together with artists such as Marlene Dumas and Candice Breitz.
For more information about the exhibition please visit http://www.centraalmuseum.nl/expo/index.php?lingo=UK
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