Useful Photography - # Medical

Useful Photography is the generic name of the millions of diverse photos used daily for a purpose: photography with a clear function, but the makers remain anonymous.

It is precisely these photographs, which we are confronted with daily without even being aware of it, that can hold our interest for an astonishingly long time. Think of photographs from sales catalogues, instruction manuals, packaging, advertising brochures, textbooks and the like.  Photos published for the most part without the makers’ names mentioned because what photographer expects to create a furor with a chicken breast photo? As soon as the images are lifted out of their context and placed in a new one, they can produce interesting insights into the quality of photographs.

For years, the photographers Hans Aarsman, Julian Germain and Hans van der Meer, artist Claudie de Cleen and designer Erik Kessels collected such photographs in the drawers of their desks, without others knowing about it. These private collections are the basis for the Dutch magazine Useful Photography.

“The goal of Useful Photography is to find out what photography, made without artistic or cultural meaning, can tell us (after it has been collected and edited) about society, about photography, about life.  We do not seek to provoke anybody, we only want to share our enthusiasm for an area of photography almost invisible because it is so commonly used.” - Erik Kessels