Bombay Beauties KESSELSKRAMER PUBLISHING NEW BOOKS Vernacular Photography

KESSELSKRAMER PUBLISHING – NEW BOOKS

For the second time, Erik Kessels brings his own photos together in a new book Tree Paintings – Photography by Erik Kessels, which documents trees “marked for destruction by loggers”. Kessels has recorded these ‘tags’, or simple inscriptions made on the bark of the tree by different people, in a series of close up shots. The second book release, Bombay Beauties, is a collection of found photographs which have been acquired and edited by Kessels and is a follow-up to Bangkok Beauties. The featured images were collected in Mumbai and depict “a rich mix of ordinary subjects from hairdressers’ models to family shots, to wedding images”.

Kessels has brought vernacular photography to the forefront and his exhibition Loving Your Pictures was one of the highlights of Rencontres d’Arles 2007. As with much of Kessels curation of, mainly, ‘found’ photographs, the themes and concepts binding the work appear deceptively simple but are brilliantly polysemic and engaging. What’s more, photographers considering producing their own books would benefit from looking at the selection of books produced and published by KesselsKramer Publishing, especially as each work is conceived of and treated to different processes resulting in objects which help achieve the initiative’s stated interest “in testing boundaries in the field of publishing”.

The HQ, KesselsKramer, is located in Amsterdam and has a sister hub outlet KKOutlet – a quirky place which is a hybrid communications agency-cum-gallery-cum-bookshop – perched in east London’s hip Hoxton Square. Kessels’s magazine Useful Photography can be purchased here alongside a wonderful collection of books.