Artist Erik Kessels unveils 24 hour photo installation:

A Dutch artist has unveiled an exhibit which features a million photos that were uploaded to Flickr, Facebook and Google over a 24 hour period.

Erik Kessels said he wanted to demonstrate how internet users are bombarded with images on a daily basis.

The Photography In Abundance installation is part of the What's Next display at Foam Amsterdam.

"The idea was to present it as a sea of images that can you drown in," Kessels told the BBC News website.

Visitors are being encouraged to walk over the mountain of photographs and pick them up, which Kessels said could leave visitors feeling strange as "you're walking over personal memories".

Kessels only downloaded and printed the photos that were free for people to look at on the internet.

"We consume images so fast nowadays, that I was wondering what it would look like if you physically printed off all the images that became available in a 24 hour period," he said.

"When you're downloading them and you have one million images on a server, that's not impressive but when you print them out and put them all in one space, that's when it really overwhelms you."

The artist said he hopes the installation also shows people "how public your private photos have become".

He added: "Before, you had your photo album and only your family and friends could look at. Now people all over the world can look at it if they find it."

The artwork was created as part of Foam's 10th anniversary.

ZINES AND PUBLICATIONS CREATED:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/november/24-hours-in-photos

24 HOURS IN PHOTOS

This installation by Erik Kessels is on show as part of an exhibition at Foam in Amsterdam that looks at the future of photography. It features print-outs of all the images uploaded to Flickr in a 24-hour period...

As you might imagine, this results in a lot of images, that fill the gallery space in an avalanche of photos. "We're exposed to an overload of images nowadays," says Kessels. "This glut is in large part the result of image-sharing sites like Flickr, networking sites like Facebook, and picture-based search engines. Their content mingles public and private, with the very personal being openly and un-selfconsciously displayed. By printing all the images uploaded in a 24-hour period, I visualise the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples' experiences."

The aim of the What's Next? exhibition is to provoke conversation about the future of the photography on the 10th anniversary of Foam. Looking at Kessels' installation, it's difficult not to feel nostalgic for photography's past and to think of the sharing of all these images as a negative, a signal that we all need to exercise more editorial control. Yet, is that really the case? Perhaps sites such as Flickr, and the general ease of use provided by digital cameras, are instead encouraging us to think differently about photography, to see it as a truly democratic artform. Can there ever be too many images in the world?

I quite like the zines and publications created, and I think the installation is an interesting concept, he seems to explore a lot with creative photography and image and text, which I like. Some designs are clean cut and minimalistic, I think it makes it look more professional: