Born in 1966, lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Erik Kessels is since 1996 Creative Director of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam and works for national and international clients.
As an artist and photography collector Kessels has published several books of his ‘collected’ images: Missing Links (1999), The Instant Men (2000), in almost every picture (2001-2013) and Wonder (2006). Since 2000, he has been an editor of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography.
For the DVD art project Loud & Clear he worked together with artists such as Marlene Dumas and Candice Breitz. Kessels writes regular editorials for numerous international magazines. He lectured at the D&AD Presidents Lecture and at several international design conferences such as in Singapore, Goa, NY, Toronto and Bangkok. He has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture where he curated a celebration of amateurism.
Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as The European Championship of Graphic Design, Graphic Detour, Loving Your Pictures, Use me Abuse me, 24HRS of Photos and Album Beauty . He als co-curated an exhibition called From Here on together with Martin Parr, Joachim Schmid, Clement Cheroux and Joan Fontuberta.
In 2010 Kessels was awarded with the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts and in 2012 elected as the most influential creative of The Netherlands.