Photobook Review: An Incomplete Encyclopedia Of Touch by Erik Kessels

Published by RVB Books, the volume comprises over 1900 images exploring our instincts for touching the inanimate object we are portrayed with.

After more than 15 years of book publishing, the vernacular vein of Dutch artist Erik Kessels is more alive than ever, and fueled by the power of collaboration. "The source of all the images did not only come from my own archive of about 15.000 family albums - Kessels says - but was also complemented with images accumulated by Karel De Mulder and Thomas Sauvin. The collaboration is important to have more eyes in the project and bring in images from different sources. Over a period of several months, we accumulate collectively many images that might work for the book, that we later edit and use for the project."

The result is a visual encyclopedia comprising 1919 photographs, divided into chapters named after the object that the people portrayed are touching. For example, under the letter A we find pictures of people touching Airplanes and Animals, under F it's time for Fences, Fireplaces, Fish and more. What they share is the question that arises in your mind as you flip through the pages: why are people touching these things? "The encyclopedia archives the human desire to put a hand on things. Whether it’s cars, boats, animals, trees, fridges, bridges, bushes, fellow humans or even their graves - everything that can be touched will be touched. This collection is far from ever being finished but provokes questions about the underlying motivations behind this universal pictorial behavior. Do we seek connection? Do we claim ownership? Or do we just want to measure ourselves to the objects of our world?"

The fact that it is unfinished is quite important. It separates this volume from traditional encyclopies and remarks that its main goal is opposite: provoking questions and speculation rather than offering answers and explanation. When I looked at it for the first time, for example, I wondered if people anchor themselves to objects as they might feel unease in front of the camera or with the idea that we will be remembered to the photos they take of us. Since there is no single answer this publication is a nice tool to reflect on such dynamics and the role that photography has acquired in our lives since the second half of the twentieth century.

The large format (22x30 cm) is a proper choice. Beyond referring to the traditional idea of an encyclopedia, it allows us indeed to catch many details and the beauty daily hidden in our everyday lives. Same goes for the layout, which displays many images per page inviting us to draw connections between different contexts and people. "I work with a reservoir of images that I try to tell stories with. Many images are in some way already taken, but not all stories behind them have been told. The surprises you constantly find in working with photographs made by amateurs never exhaust me. The idea of an encyclopedia was born after we found out that there’s a ridiculous number of images of people touching things and the various objects, they touch are becoming hilarious after accumulating so many of them. The lay-out and design of the book serves the idea of it being an encyclopedia and a large overview of this universal pictorial behavior."

The book moves between nostalgia and humor. We see how time passes fast, how costumes and trends evolve, we wonder about these families and their lives - and then suddenly we realize we're watching three people posing by a gravestone. "Large categories in the book are people touching trees, cars and animals. But the weirder objects touched are poles, gravestones and wax. But is some way the essence is the category where people touch other people. There’s also a so called ‘cameo appearance’ in the book, but hard to find amongst the 1.919 images in the book". A further occasion to spend time on this beautiful volume while waiting for Kessels new vernacular defiance.

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An Incomplete Encycolopedia Of Touch
published by RVB Books

22 x 30 cm
Soft cover
496 pages
1919 colour and black & white photographs
ISBN : 978-2-492175-47-3
60€
Special Edition here

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All images were collected by Erik Kessels, Karel de Mulder, Thomas Sauvin

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Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, curator and communication designer, with great interest in art and photography. Erik Kessels is since 1996 Creative Partner of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam and London. As an artist and curator Kessels has published over 100 books of his re- appropriated images and has written the international bestseller Failed It! and Complete Amateur. He has taught at several Art Academies (Amsterdam, Milan, Toronto, Lausanne, Düsseldorf). Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures, Mother Nature, 24HRS in Photos, Album Beauty, Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch, Muddy Dance, Shit and Unfinished Father. Currently he’s working on a long-term European art project called Europe Archive. In 2010 Kessels was awarded with the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, in 2016 nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Until 2022-2023 his mid-career retrospective is shown in Turin, Düsseldorf and Budapest and he exhibited in San Francisco in Pier24 and the SFMOMA. He was called “a visual sorcerer” by Time Magazine and a “Modern Anthropologist” by Voque (Italia). Instagram: erik.kessels

RVB Books is both an independent publisher dedicated to designing and printing unique fine arts books and a gallery featuring exhibitions on new editorial practices.