Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch

Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch, published by RVB Books, is a visual taxonomy built from thousands of found family photographs. Its subject is one recurring gesture: a hand placed on something, to claim it, measure it, or simply pose beside it.

Assembled by Erik Kessels with Thomas Sauvin and Karel de Mulder from more than 15,000 vernacular albums, the book sorts roughly 1,919 anonymous snapshots into alphabetical entries named for the object touched. Airplanes and animals fall under A, fences and fireplaces under F, and gravestones sit alongside cars, trees, and other people. The 496-page paperback reads as a dictionary of an unspoken human habit. Its categories are deadpan and its images unposed. Every page raises the same question: are these people asserting ownership, seeking contact, or measuring themselves against the world around them?

Kessels is a Dutch artist and co-founder of the advertising agency KesselsKramer. For two decades he has built projects from vernacular and appropriated photography, including In Almost Every Picture and 24HRS in Photos. Sauvin is known for Beijing Silvermine, his archive of negatives recovered from a Beijing recycling plant, and de Mulder is a longtime collector of amateur photography. The book continues Kessels' recurring method of turning anonymous snapshots into encyclopedic structures.