77 | 100 24 hours in pictures
from the series 100 photos - 100 stories
Foto Koch celebrates 100 years and we tell THE best stories! Today's story comes from the artist Erik Kessels, who wants to explore and present the project "24 hrs in Photos". You can find out exactly what's behind it in this post.
This story is also part of our new issue of the snapshot magazine "Wandel". Sign up here now so you don't miss it!
Erik Kessels / Exhibition "24hrs in photos"A flood of images
Photography is constantly changing. Be it the way we take pictures, photographic styles, themes or even the presentation of our own work. We live in a digital age characterized by a fast pace. The word "change" takes on a whole new dimension. We are exposed to an oversupply of images, especially through social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and co. Almost everyone has a camera with them at this very moment: the smartphone. This omnipresence naturally supports the fast pace of life, as you can take a picture in any situation and at any moment and publish it directly on the platforms. However, this also gives creativity a whole new dimension. Everyone now has the opportunity to give free rein to their art and perhaps discover a new side to themselves. Capturing moments no matter where you are, implementing large projects with incredible speed and precision: this is what photography is all about today. On the other hand, there is a flood of images and thus also a change in photography, which Erik Kessel wants to explore and depict in his series "24hrs in Photos". To this end, he presents the images of a single day. The series was first exhibited at FOAM Amsterdam at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. Where once toxic chemicals and hours of development were used to create a finished image, today it only takes the push of a button. The art of photography, once reserved for specialists, is now open to everyone. Can this flood be compared with the photography of the past? Or is it simply a different way of displaying images?
Erik Kessels Experience the project live
"For '24hrs in Photos' I wanted to explore this overwhelming flood of images and give the gallery visitor a physical means to comprehend their vastness. By printing all the images uploaded in a 24-hour period, I visualized the feeling of drowning in the representations of other people's experiences. The audience could walk around mountains of photographs and even step over images, interacting with the installation by picking up images and looking at them up close. Where the installation is impressively monumental at first glance, this experience becomes more intimate when people start to look at the images individually," says Erik Kessels. The series draws people's attention to the changing nature of photography. On the one hand, it is intended to highlight the fast pace of life and the flood of images, but also the change that photography is constantly undergoing, which is something quite natural and even good.
Erik Kessels / Project 24 hours in picturesAbout Erik Kessels
Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, curator and communication designer with a keen interest in photography. He has been creative partner of the communication agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam/London since 1996. As an artist and curator, Kessels has published over 75 books of his 're-appropriated' images: Wonder (2003), in almost every picture (2001-2020), Shit (2018) and Read Naked (2019). Since 2000 he has been editor of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography and author of the international bestseller Failed It! He has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam), ?cal (Lausanne), Raffles (Milan) and at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, where he curated a festival of amateurism .
Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures, Mother Nature, 24HRS in Photos, Album Beauty, Unfinished Father and GroupShow. He also co-curated the exhibition From Here on together with Martin Parr, Joachim Schmid, Clement Cheroux and Joan Fontuberta.
in 2010 Kessels was awarded the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, in 2016 he was nominated for the Deutsche B?rse Photography Prize. Until 2019, his mid-career retrospective was shown in Turin, D?sseldorf and Budapest, this year he exhibited at SFMOMA. Time Magazine called him "a visual magician" and Voque (Italy) a "modern anthropologist."
Find more projects on his website: www.erikkessels.com
