l’Inaperçu bookstore l’Inaperçu delighted to welcome you last Monday for the launch of the “ICONO PHONE” box set: a photo memory game by Erik Kessels, conceived by Nadia Banian and Eric Chesnais and published by Pymaryd.

ICONO PHONE is the result of a collaboration between two unconventional and playful collectors. On one hand, there is Erik Kessels, known for his passion for vernacular imagery. He loves hunting down anonymous images, isolating them from their original context to give them a new lease on life. He knows how to spot, select, and gather these anonymous photos, which he reinterprets through his own lens, always with humor and without judgment. On the other side are Nadia Banian and Éric Chesnais, enthusiasts of contemporary art and photography, who enjoy taking everyday objects out of their context to give them a new status by collaborating with artists such as Erik Kessels.

Their goal is not to be exhaustive in their collections, but rather to bring together colors, shapes, memories, and encounters with the unexpected. For this project, they chose to focus on the iconic “dial” phones of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These objects, though they have disappeared from our daily lives, remain present in our minds as witnesses to a bygone era and a particular lifestyle and way of communicating.