Image Tsunami

We live in the midst of a photographic renaissance where we have become accustomed to consuming images with the same voracity and delight with those who devour junk food. To withstand the deluge that floods our retinas day after day, we consume them without digesting them properly or we just swallow them. Rarely do we pause to look more closely; To read, appreciate or question an image. Erik Kessels’ multivolume In Almost Every Picture has long been a coveted and revered classic of vernacular photography. In Erik Kessels: Image Tsunami the Dutch art director has turned his attention to the abundance of images available for finding on the Internet, shared in their millions on websites like Flickr. In a world where everyone produces and edits photography, where, as Kessels says, the average kid today gets photographed more than a celebrity of 50 years ago, what does a single image mean, and what is its status in the overwhelming flood of images? In Kessels’ words: Image Tsunami holds an enormous collection of images that I live with, that I remix and edit. It’s a representation of the overload of imagery that is in my head. My hope is that the book will inspire others to make their own remixes of these images.