Motto X KesselsKramer @ Motto Berlin
Opening reception: 08.08.2013
from 7pm

After last month’s stop in London, we are happy to welcome KK Outlet, the London outpost of KesselsKramer, an international publisher and communications agency. The KesselsKramer Publishing catalogue hosts a vast collection of vernacular photography books as well as titles encapsulating short stories, advertising, graphic design and unusual art works. The KesselsKramer catalogue will be available at Motto, Berlin throughout August.

New Release: Useful Photography #11

The Useful Photography series is a collection of magazines which focus on overlooked and supposedly underwhelming images taken for practical purposes. The latest publication, Useful Photography #11 rifles through the history of human targets culled from US shooting ranges. With the gun debate still raging in the USA, this unsettling collection of images throws up all kinds of questions about the attitudes towards guns in America.

A selection of images from this latest publication will be on show at Motto/Chert Gallery throughout August.

Exhibition runs 09-31.08.2013

http://www.kesselskramerpublishing.com/

Brussels Beauties

Collected & edited by Erik Kessels.
The third in the found photography series collecting images of attractiveness from around the world. After Bangkok Beauties and Bombay Beauties, Kessels focuses on the smaller scale story of one Belgian girl. Unaware of her own prettiness, she turns a pensive face to the camera in image after image. The repetitive pictures build a quietly intense atmosphere, like stills from an old movie. We are left to speculate on almost everything about her: age, period when the photos were made, exact location (the Belgian capital of the title is absent inside). Only the consistency of her ambiguous expression is a certainty. A mini Mona Lisa, she seems alternately sadly happy, and happily sad, a strangely complex and mature set of emotions for one of her years.
Black & white, 170 x 255 mm, 40 pages, soft cover, edition of 500.

D 15€
Buy it

Bombay Beauties

Collected & edited by Erik Kessels. A sequel to Bangkok Beauties, this collection of found photographs comprises a selection of pieces discovered by Erik Kessels in Mumbai. It depicts a rich mix of ordinary subjects, from hairdressers’ models to family shots to wedding images. Mixed in with this cross section of typical folk are rare shots of Bollywood actors and stars. Taken together, these show the rich diversity of the city, hinting at its untold stories and lives. Black & white, 170 x 225 mm, 60 pages, soft cover, edition of 500.

D 15€
Buy it

Bangkok Beauties

Beauty captures the eye as well as the imagination. There is something naturally alluring and distracting about loveliness; something in its purity, its naivete, its promise and its hopeful inspiration. We all tend to gravitate with passion towards the ideal. In Bangkok Beauties, Erik Kessels provides a look at a specific photographic series that depicts attractive women during a beauty contest sometime ago. Here we see the contestants displaying themselves in such a way as to be judged by their poise, their posture and their most of all by their appearance. The photographs have become even more precious and lovely in their decay. Over the years, the pictures have deteriorated, been scratched and suffered weather all of which serves to enhance their beauty both as images and as objects. In fact, we can hold these rescued beauties and see them front and back thereby join in the admiring contest that continues even still. Black & white, 170 x 225 mm, 28 pages, soft cover.

D 15€
Buy it

American Zoo

Collected, edited and designed by Jennifer Skupin, text by Zack McDonald.
Aristotle once observed that “man is by nature a political animal.” Art Director Jennifer Skupin takes this age-old profundity quite literally, compiling images of American presidents and the animals which they most resemble. It turns out that Fillmore is a mallard, Grant is a grizzly and Obama a llama. For all those hungry for the ultimate series in presidential non-human doppelgangers, American Zoo is the feast you’ve been awaiting. Black & white, 170 x 255 mm, 100 pages, soft cover, edition of 500.

D 14.50€
Buy: orders@mottodistribution.com