Talk Soon by Erik Kessels & Thomas Sauvin @ Atelier Éditions

Text by Lara Southern

Talk Soon, the new publication from Atelier Éditions captures the collaborative exchange of captionless images between photographers Erik Kessels and Thomas Sauvin, shared with one another throughout their respective COVID-19 quarantines. The photographic conversation was initiated by the two artists in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of the year’s first lockdown.

The result is a vibrant tearaway postcard book, composed by Atelier Éditions author Kingston Trinder, who took the “dialogue” between Kessels and Sauvin, both displaying their own unique stylistic thumbprint, and wove together a free-associative narrative to connect the otherwise apparently disparate images.

The artists exchanged a hundred and twenty images in total and, though the project was entirely organic in nature, there remains a connective tissue throughout the collection resulting from recurring subject matter, aesthetic, and similar photographic practices. Atelier Éditions divided the book into two sections: “Talk”, showcasing images from Kessel’s personal collection of vernacular photography, and “SOON” showcasing photographs from Sauvin’s China-archive of analog material. Despite the imagery’s different origins, the snapshots are largely taken from mundane daily life scenarios, and are then elevated with the application of Trinder’s quirky captions, resulting in an imaginative, and multi-dimensional work.

On the back of each “postcard” is a whimsical caption of usually no more than five words, dreamt up by Trinder, that captures the essence of the photograph. For Kessels’ image of a sleeping boy, on whose arm remains the imprint of the blanket he was napping on, the caption reads “leaving an impression,” while Sauvin’s black and white image of a man’s chest sewn up after surgery is titled “cross-stitched.” In another image, Kessels captures a group of golden-colored apples, carefully organized into a perfect v-shape while below it, Sauvin’s photograph shows a man bent over a pool table, preparing to take a shot.

The colorful wire-bound book permits the reader to create their own endlessly interchangeable, meandering stories and possesses the vibrant whimsy one might associate with a children’s book. This unique collaboration transcends conventional narratives as well as national borders—Kessels is based in the Netherlands, Sauvin in France, and Trinder in Montréal—and is a prime example of the connective and vernacular qualities of the photographic medium.

A humorous, humanistic, and wholly interactive experience, Talk Soon is a rare positive artistic reflection of an otherwise deeply difficult global period, and reminds us of the appeal of analog interactions in a largely digitized world. The introduction to the book concludes in a manner to which all of us can relate, after a year of semi-isolation and distance from those we care about and connect to:
“Talk Soon, From Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, and Montréal.”

Talk Soon is available for purchase through the Atelier Éditions website