The photographs of Viviane Sassen can be seen in campaigns for the world's largest fashion brand and renowned artistic institutions. The exhibition "Phosphor: Art & Fashion 1990-2023," presenting over thirty years of her artistic development, is currently on view at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
When I catalog artists in my mind, I assign them specific keywords. Sometimes they’re sensory experiences, sometimes technical descriptions—anything that allows me to recall the smallest details of their work. The vividness of colors, the sculptural quality of shapes, the fluidity of movements, the integrity of elements—these are the thoughts that come to mind when going to see an exhibition by the Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen. It’s a reminiscence of the impressions I had when I first saw her fashion campaigns (she collaborated with brands such as Hermès, Dior, Cartier, Miu Miu, Louis Vuitton, Missoni, and Stella McCartney) and older non-commercial projects about 10 years ago. One of my favorites from the time, "Umbra" (2014), parts of which are presented at the Paris exhibition, consists of several photographic series in which the artist explores the concept of shadow, giving it various forms and meanings, often inspired by personal experiences. The shadow becomes a play of lights and colors (Sassen grew up in Africa and always emphasizes that its strongly contrasting light had a significant impact on her work) or a metaphor for the fading presence of another human being (the shadow first appeared in the artist's work after the death of her father).
Creative language and autobiographical threads
I start my visit with Sassen’s latest projects. "Modern Alchemy" (2022), realized in collaboration with the philosopher Emanuele Coccia, explores how two forms of expression, photography and essay, interact with each other. "Cadavre Exquis" (2020) is a series based on the surrealist (the artist's fascination with this movement is stressed throughout the exhibition) game where each participant adds a new word or image to the collectively created work but does it blindly, without knowledge of what the predecessors contributed with. The result of both projects is collages that theoretically fit into my personal set of keywords for "Sassen." There are colors, movement, integration, but the visual effect is entirely different from what I knew before. In the foreground there are playful, sexually- charged bodies, intertwining with elements of flora and fauna. These are some of Sassen's most experimental works. However, I have doubts about whether they are the most successful. Sassen emphasizes that she dislikes unambiguity. Unfortunately, I get the impression that she didn't manage to avoid it here. I much prefer when, instead of escaping into literalness by adding to the collages the photos of chameleons symbolizing metamorphosis and adaptation, she captures the metaphorical, chameleon-like ability of bodies to integrate with their surroundings.
Shadows, colors, and shapes
To understand the origins of the sexually charged element in Sassen's work, I return to her roots. Before delving into photography, Sassen studied fashion design and worked as a model. Her earliest projects involved photographing herself (her self-portraits often being nudes, with the same kind of bold, though less playful, sexuality I see in the collages in her latest projects) and a close circle of friends. The series "Folio" (1996) becomes my most intriguing discovery from the entire exhibition. The embryonic stages of Sassen's distinctive artistic language are clearly visible here. There is a focus on color and precision in composition. There is the concealing of faces that might dominate the frame and suggest an interpretation of the photograph through the emotions they express. There is the manipulation of an anonymous, universally relatable body akin to sculpture. Yet, these photos contain rawness, especially in their approach to the body, which, despite already carrying the marks of stateliness, retains very human features such as skin folds and wrinkles - characteristics that will gradually disappear from Sassen's portfolio over time. The shadow appears for the first time in "Zwaartekracht/Gravity" (1995). Inspired by "Winter Journey," Nobuyoshi Araki's visual diary documenting the process of his wife's death, this project served as Sassen's graduation work. However, the inspiration went beyond aesthetics—during this time, the photographer lost her father, and the theme of transience, loss, and absence became an integral part of her later work.
Evolution of the body
The depiction of intense, emancipated sexuality in the latest works on one hand represents a detour from Sassen's distinctive, more lyrical approach to portraying the body. On the other hand, it signifies a kind of return to her roots. Sassen emphasizes that she sees herself not only as a photographer but also as a sculptor, and more than the narrative itself, she is interested in shapes, colors, and forms. She mentions that her greatest obsessions are death, sexuality, desire, and closeness, which, when looking at her photos, I understand not only as a need for proximity with another person but also as a merging with the environment. The fusion of the body with another body, the body with texture, the body with an object, the body with nature, is one of the most characteristic elements of her work. To achieve this, Sassen erases identity: fully visible faces rarely appear in her portraits; they are often replaced by shadows or obscured by styling elements. Bodies, devoid of the natural textures of the skin, become symbolic and gain a sculptural smoothness. Over the years, Sassen's photos have become increasingly aesthetic, yet they remain challenging to decipher. It takes a moment to understand which part of the silhouette is shown from which angle and in what configuration, or what shadows may conceal. Although the artist emphasizes that she works intuitively, without a strictly defined and pre-planned agenda, her compositions are very precise. The intensity of individual elements, such as color saturation, does not make them overloaded with content. On the contrary, the lack of literalness that I appreciate so much in Sassen's work leaves one wanting more.
Thirty years is a substantial amount of time for experimenting, and Sassen is not afraid of it at all. Although she remains consistently fascinated by the same themes, she seeks ways to tell their stories anew. She introduces painterly elements and collages into her photographs, uses them in video installations, and engages in collaborations, including with writers and poets, to delve even deeper into her explorations. She doesn't shy away from commercial work either, stating that it is through collaborations with major brands and leading fashion magazines that she has been able to present her photographs to a wider audience.
The title of the exhibition distinguishes her portfolio into "art" and "fashion," but I have always been impressed by how she manages to blur that boundary and tell commercial fashion stories in her distinct, artistic language, avoiding unambiguity. I hope she can return to this narrative approach in future projects, including those exploring sexuality, which I add to my set of keywords describing her body of work.
The exhibition "Phosphor: Art & Fashion 1990–2023" can be viewed at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris until February 11, 2024.