Erik Kessels (1966, The Netherlands) is a visual artist who has made photography the core of his practice. His work develops from the recovery of archival images—often anonymous or forgotten—which he reintroduces into a new context through a process of reworking. For Kessels, photography is never a neutral document, but a language to be manipulated and reinterpreted in order to reveal cultural and social dynamics.
Karel De Mulder (1985), who lives and works in Brussels, shares a similar attitude. His work originates from the elaboration of abstract ideas that gradually transform into artistic concepts, taking on different forms depending on the needs of the project. His practice moves fluidly from the intellectual to the material level, with a constant focus on the conceptual value of the outcome.
The collaboration between Kessels and De Mulder led to the creation of the photobook Man. The work consists of 768 pages, all devoted to archival photographs that follow the same recurring pattern: a man placed at the center of the image, surrounded by female figures. In the original shots, the man is the pivot of the image, the focal point toward which attention converges, while the women occupy marginal positions, relegated to the sides like extras.
The new layout of the volume generates a provocative effect: the male figure, positioned exactly at the center of the page, is inevitably cut along the book’s binding. What was once a symbol of authority and centrality inevitably dissolves. This design choice takes on both an ironic and critical meaning: the man, who with his claim to predominance occupied the central space, becomes the victim of the very position of privilege—condemned to disappear, or at least to appear censored.
This dynamic overturns the roles traditionally assigned: the women, usually relegated to the margins of the image, remain visible and intact, while the male figure dissolves in the very process of pagination dictated by the object itself. The artists’ gesture is not one of direct or authoritarian intervention, but rather a staging of the inevitable fate of gender hierarchies: patriarchy, which constructs man as the visual and social fulcrum, carries within itself its own condemnation—here represented by a symbolic cut.
Man thus becomes a critical rereading of archival photography, transforming images of the past into tools for reflection on the present. The book is not only an artistic object, but also a conceptual device that raises questions about the construction of gender roles and about art’s ability to symbolically subvert mechanisms of power.
Man, Erik Kessels and Karel De Mulder
Color, 11 x 16 cm, 768 pages, softcover with dust jacket.
Published by RVB BOOKS, Paris, 2025.
04/10/25
