VIVIANE SASSEN
‘Surrealistic and intuitive, with a tendency to bring confusion’, Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen has entranced her widely varying audiences for almost twenty years with her unhindered and refined visions. Sassen’s time seems split three ways: between striking high fashion campaigns for the likes of Miu Miu, Carven and Missoni, personal and commissioned art projects, and her truly stirring, boundary pushing series based in Africa.
Born in Amsterdam, Sassen moved to Kenya with her family at the age of two, and so began her love affair with the vast plains of Africa. Despite the fact that her residency only lasted for a few short years, the effect was indelible: vivid memories, captured fragments of time, lively people, colours and smells... These are the recurring shadows which unconsciously bind themselves to each and every one of Sassen’s shots, be it fashion or personal. The striking colours, dramatic shadows and a vulnerable honesty are the tools used to express her thoughts, dreams and childhood memories.
Sassen’s journey to photography was not a direct line. Initially studying fashion design and casually modelling, she soon came to realise that her true passion lay behind the lens; in deciding what we all see. Sassen recently explained ‘my interest is not the interest of the fashion industry. My interest is to make fascinating pictures, images that have the power to capture your imagination and to keep your attention for more than a few seconds... Fashion has such a short circulation. It has to go on, it has to become better all the time. It can be exhausting too, but that enormous energy also gives an enormous kick. While in my artistic work, I am sometimes working on my own, and I have to plan a lot more time to get something published, in fashion, it’s a group process, and it happens fast. I enjoy the group work. You get together for only one day, and then it all has
to happen. There is the highest level of concentration and energy. I love that about fashion: it’s fast and immediate, both as a work process and in publishing.’
Despite her success in the fashion world, Sassen finds herself drawn to the completely contrasting plains of Africa, and yet her work there still holds all of the elements that make her commissioned work so compelling. In interviews Sassen has explained that ‘being in Africa feels like coming home, although I know of course that I’ll never be African. I feel more natural and lively there. I feel more extroverted. The whole idea of logic and public and private space is different there. In the Netherlands, everything is very structured. I feel like the Netherlands and Africa represent two sides of my personality.’ In this way, we begin to understand why many have noted that Sassen’s work is a form of self-reflective analysis.
It takes a rare talent to cross the boundaries of both high fashion and politically tinged art photography simultaneously, and an even rarer talent to so successfully fuse the two that boundaries just disappear, somehow. Instead we see the unconscious echos of a vivid youth, devoid of judgement yet at the same time uncompromising. The result is completely arresting. Sassen’s images are intimate and mysterious. The human figure is artfully arranged, draped in bold colours and suspended in shadows. More often than not, you find faces obscured and obstructed from view.
In a recent interview, Sassen explains her attitude towards her role and approach: ‘Sometimes I see myself more as a sculptor than as a photographer, and when you see a face it's much more about that particular person in the picture, while if you don't see the face it's much more the idea of the body as a sculpture. Also, we are so used to reading faces and people's expressions and their feelings, so, when you see a face in a picture, you are immediately drawn to it, and it tells you a lot about how you should interpret that picture, but if you don't see the face it's much harder to make the right judgment. I kind of like this kind of mystery in pictures. I don't want them to tell a story right away — I'd like people to make up their own stories... What I am trying to capture or produce is an archetypal image, an image that goes beyond the description of the physiognomic and psychical specificities of an individual. I seek to provide the work with a universal dimension, what I call the roundness of a work.’
Sassen reflects ‘As a child, I was always very much in my fantasy world. Somehow, photography became a way to grow up, to face reality. Fantasy and reality are opposites, and all my work is about these oppositions. Fear and desire, light and shadow, death and sex… I like to throw up smoke curtains. I’m not interested in making statements and my pictures aren’t trying to teach you anything. I try to make images that confuse me, and I hope they confuse others, too.’
All images belong to Viviane Sassen
Published in PITCH Zine Issue #19, July 2013