Who are you in relation to your work?

Photographers are very good in the images they make, but often lack the ability to communicate about them and themselves as artists. In this intense workshop, Erik Kessels will push the participants to communicate more clearly about themselves and improve their personality in their work. Being the author or the promoter of your work are two completely different skills.

Over a period of 2 days, Erik Kessels will prepare the participants for their possibilities and obstructions they will face in their professional career in the field of photography. Participants work on several small briefs to get more known to this facet of photography.

About Erik Kessels 

Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, curator and communication designer, with great interest in art and photography. Erik Kessels has been the Creative Partner of communications agency KesselsKramer since 1996. As an artist and curator Kessels has published over 100 books of his 're-appropriated' images and has written the international bestseller Failed It! and Complete Amateur.

He has taught at several Art Academies (Amsterdam, Milan, Toronto, Lausanne, Düsseldorf). Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures, Mother Nature, 24HRS in Photos, Album Beauty and Unfinished Father. Currently he’s working on a long-term European art project called Europe Archive. In 2010 Kessels was awarded with the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, in 2016 nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Until 2022 his mid-career retrospective is shown in Turin, Düsseldorf and Budapest and he exhibited recently in the SFMOMA. He was called “a visual sorcerer” by Time Magazine and a “Modern Anthropologist” by Voque (Italia).
www.erikkessels.com

This event is supported by the Consulate-General of the Netherlands in Istanbul. 

📍 FiLBooks, Reşitpaşa, Tuncay Artun Cad. no:91

*Participants of the workshop can attend "A Midnight Spicy Picture Show" talk by Erik Kessels on 04.10.2025 for free. To mark the soft opening of FiLBooks’ new home in Reşitpaşa, join us for a special late-night lecture titled Midnight Spicy Picture Show by Erik Kessels, who will present some of his most daring and humorous works and sign his books. Limited ticket sales for this private event and further info is available here.