One of the annual highlights of our artistic calendar takes place in the vibrant town of Arles in France's south east corner. Rencontres d'Arles is a photography fair that runs from the beginning of July throughout the summer until 16th September, showcasing a gargantuan range of work from new and established photographers from around the globe. This year, the fair is also celebrating Magnum's 60th anniversary.
But don't panic if you're vacationing elsewhere this year because we've been granted exclusive access to show the work of our favourite exhibitors. Each week for the duration of the fair, we'll feature a gallery of work from the people who've caught our eye, starting today with Erik Kessels.
'Loving Your Pictures' is the title of Amsterdam-based Creative Director Erik Kessels' exhibition at Arles. Something of an avid photography collector, clearly possessed with an eye for an image and a story beyond the image, Kessels' found photographic material is certainly not short on creativity. The collection, described as 'vernacular photography', brings together a series of pictures with new meanings outside their original and intended purpose.
Ubiquitous, amateur photographic accidents are imbued with an added charm: unwitting background characters from holiday snaps are turned into the subject matter of their own portraits; accidental double exposures superimpose one image on top of another; and old photo collections, rescued from the fleamarket, tell a new story, albeit simply from the repeated appearance of a dalmation or old Dutch lady in a black taxi. Click here to see a gallery of pictures from the exhibition.
Next week: Terrains d'entente
This series of found pictures shows a Spanish lady photographed over the course of many years by her husband. When the series was part of an exhibition in Barcelona, the images appeared on the news and in Spanish newspapers. A woman who had previously worked with the lady in the photographs at Telefonica came forward and revealed that she was called Josephina Aparicio Iglesias, that she had passed away and had no children. Click on the image above to view the series.
Telling the story of one woman's travels around Europe from the front seat of a black taxi, this series has an air of poignancy. The taxi driver, A.J.Paetzhold took all the images except the final one in the series, taken of him by the lady from her front seat. The pictures came into Kessels' possession via the Dutch photogrpaher Andrea Stultiens, neighbours of the Paetzholds in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. When Paetzhold's wife passed away, Andrea helped clear out the house and was given a collection of images, which were subsequently given to Kessels. On closer inspection Kessels discovered the lady in the photographs (also from Nijmegen and since passed away) was disabled, hence unable to get out of the taxi on her travels. Click on the image above to view the series.
The pictures in this series are in fact self-portarits of the deer.The pictures were taken by a camera with a motion detector placed on trees in the forests, enabling the hunters to monitor the deer population. Kessels contacted an association of hunters in America who had posted images of the deer on the internet. Click on the image above to view the series.
Kessels rescued this collection of photographs from a Brussels fleamarket. Taken on The Ramblas in Barcelona by professional photographers who snapped people on the streets, the twins always appear arm-in-arm in the same position. From the dates of the photogrpahs, Kessels concludes that one of the twins died by the end of the Second World War. In the subsequent images it appears a sif a space has been left open for her by the remaining twin. Click on the image above to view the series.
These pictures were given to Kessels by his German friend and collaborator Marion Blomeyer. the beloved dalmation forms the link in each photograph, but nothing else other than its German nationality is known. Click on the image above to view the series.
'Strangers in my photo albums'
The ubiquitous people in the background of Kessels' photographs have been given their own moment in the limelight in this series. By cropping out the main subject of each image, and making the background figures the main focus Kessels has produced a series of images with a humorous, voyeuristic quality.Click on the image above to view the series.
Formed from reject photographs, Kessels has imbued these unlikely images with a significance beyond the accidental double exposures or unfortunate compositions we've all experienced, but are slowly dying out with the ruthless efficiency of digital photography. Click on the image above to see the series.
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Rencontres d'Arles runs from 3rd July to 16th September all over the French town of Arles.
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