Cuts and Grazes

A Look At… grazed knees, bleeding noses and tears or taking pictures of our little ones’ not so pretty moments.

This week’s A Look At is inspired by Erik Kessels who is the founder of Kessels Kramer Publishing. Kessels, as described by the Guardian, “is, among other things, the most mischievous champion of found or vernacular photograph. He approaches photography with an irreverent outlook”. “Kessels has little concern for the neatly pruned. Instead, he actively seeks out the dissonant, the banal, and most crucially, the disruption to ritualised harmony within family photography”. I came across Kessels a while back when stumbling upon a series of photos he took of his children depicting their spontaneous nose bleeds, cuts and grazes. For him, “family photographs are family propaganda, highlighting the happy, beautiful moments” and these photographs challenge that. It is an interesting point. Our daily lives have their fair share of dull and rubbish, smiles and tears, yet we rarely take to the camera to record the gory and gritty unless there is a specific purpose to that. Most of us will (unconsciously?) sieve out the negative to weave a timeline of memories solely made of blissfully happy moments.

Featured images by Erik Kessels, Nirrimi Firebrace, Venetia Scott and Flannery O’Kafka (Hugo’s broken nose)