Erik Kessels installation, 24 Hours in Photos, is as much sculptural as it is photographic. The piece contains many thousands of images uploaded to Flickr in a 24 hour period, estimated at upwards of 400000 images. Often, descriptions of the work use adjectives associated with large volumes of water, such as; saturated, inundated, rising tide, tidal wave. Even our old principle Gareth Dent described it as a ‘flood’. In the many institutions and galleries that it has been shown, the work has been represented as such, often dwarfing the viewer with peaks and troughs, emblematic of an ocean, with viewers appearing as if standing before a roiling tsunami of images.

Fig 1.

The work was widely exhibited in 2013; since then Instagram has taken over the landscape of image sharing platforms. In 2016 it was estimated that in a single day 95 million images and videos were uploaded to the site. Add to this the upsurge in popularity of the platform among global youth culture and the huge demographic of India and China, with their billion plus populations and burgeoning middle classes and the amount of uploaded images very quickly overtakes the global populous.

When viewing the work, we see just the surface and often some of the surface images are wrong sided, so therefore out of view. What of the huge amount of images underneath and out of sight? Seeing this work as the metaphor that it is, it would be very easy as an image maker to become overawed by the concept of the image flood. We need to ask ourselves why are we creating work; is it about notoriety, the gratification of strangers, awards, the buzz of getting likes; or is it much more personal? For me it’s about the process of creativity and about learning from my peers; ultimately, it’s about progression with my photography. I take solace from two photographers who produced work solely for themselves, who sought for nothing more than the joy of their art: Jacques Henri Lartigue and Vivian Maier.

Illustrations

Fig 1. Erik Kessel Goggle Images (2019) [Screenshot] Google.com. (2019). Erik Kessels – Google Search. [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/search?q=Erik+Kessels&client=safari&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg:Cb8t7x2nidBHIjhOsqqvkEZ-urw2FZZV3aRFqJJGq0SOadhzw2V0jw9em1xx_1SNROso29LDHmu4D7XwHfOs-ROxjFioSCU6yqq-QRn66EXW9jyNpACIEKhIJvDYVllXdpEUR03gavvdRkeIqEgmokkarRI5p2BGf_1_1d3iQNMYioSCXPDZXSPD16bETwlyzinrY-6KhIJXHH9I1E6yjYRCFn1lK1L0V4qEgn0sMea7gPtfBFMYOcrSlEwFSoSCQd86z5E7GMWEUOKhLW0mOC1&tbo=u&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx_rfsm-viAhUGcBQKHcgyD2gQ9C96BAgBEBs&biw=1310&bih=815&dpr=1#imgrc=_ [Accessed 17 Jun. 2019].

Bibliography

99firms.com. (2019). Instagram Marketing Statistics 2019 – 99firms.com. [online] Available at: https://99firms.com/blog/instagram-marketing-statistics/ [Accessed 17 Jun. 2019].

#weareoca. (2019). Dealing with the flood… – We Are OCA. [online] Available at: https://weareoca.com/subject/photography/people-are-hungry-for-stories/ [Accessed 17 Jun. 2019].