The Many Lives of Erik Kessels

Erik Kessels is a highly influential photography collector, curator, editor, and designer recently acclaimed for his own artistic practice. Creative director of the communications agency KesselsKramer, founded in 1995, Kessels has published over fifty books of collected images, including Missing Links (1999), The Instant Men (2000), the In Almost Every Picture series (2001–ongoing), and Wonder (2006). Since 2000, he has been an editor of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography, and has curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures (2008), 24 Hrs in Photos (2010), Album Beauty (2012), and Unfinished Father (2015). In 2011, he co-curated an exhibition called From Here On together with Martin Parr, Joachim Schmid, Clément Chéroux, and Joan Fontcuberta. In 2010, Kessels was awarded the prestigious Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, and in 2016 he was a finalist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for his exhibition Unfinished Father. Francesco Zanot is curator at CAMERA, Turin; director of the MA in Photography at NABA, Milan; and currently curator of the inaugural exhibition Give Me Yesterday at Fondazione Prada Osservatorio, Milan. Simon Baker is curator of Photography and International Art at Tate Modern, London. Hans Aarsman is a Dutch photographer, author, and lecturer at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Sandra S. Phillips is the Curator of Photography Emerita at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.