Book Review Phosphor Photographs by Viviane Sassen Reviewed by Blake Andrews “ If the name Viviane Sassen immediately conjures up images of haute couture, that’s understandable. The 51-year-old Dutch photographer has worked both sides of the fashion lens, as both model and image-maker, gradually gaining stature in the exclusive world of luxury brand photography. At this point her Rolodex reads like a Paris runway checklist. She’s been commissioned by Miu Miu, Stella McCartney, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, Dior, Lancel, and more..."

Phosphor. By Viviane Sassen.

Phosphor
Photographs by Viviane Sassen
Prestel, Munich, Germany, 2024. 528 pp.

If the name Viviane Sassen immediately conjures up images of haute couture, that’s understandable. The 51-year-old Dutch photographer has worked both sides of the fashion lens, as both model and image-maker, gradually gaining stature in the exclusive world of luxury brand photography. At this point her Rolodex reads like a Paris runway checklist. She’s been commissioned by Miu Miu, Stella McCartney, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, Dior, Lancel, and more.

After appearing initially in advertisements and magazines around the globe, her photographs have made their way increasingly into monographs. Sassen is a prolific creator, and she has authored or contributed to more than twenty photobooks since 2008. Her latest, Phosphor, may be the most comprehensive to date. It is certainly the largest, weighing in at 500+ pages, 1.5” thick, and several pounds. The weighty softcover tome is published in conjunction with a large traveling mid-career retrospective. It is prefaced with 5 critical essays (translated into French and English), and the main body is comprised of hundreds of photographs stretching from the late 1980s through 2023.

Most of Phosphor’s images have appeared before elsewhere, either in advertisements, previous monographs, or both. In terms of pictures, Sassen fans will be on familiar ground. But the book’s bifurcated design casts them here in a novel format. The book is comprised of two inverted halves, each sequenced chronologically toward a midpoint, where the format flips 180 degrees. One half features personal work. The other half is magazine assignments. The reader can begin at either end. Regardless of starting point, the process will be roughly the same: Behind a bright painted cover — one side green, the obverse blue — comes a deluge of photographs leading steadily from Sassen’s origins to the present.

Phosphor’s format divides Sassen’s oeuvre into two separate piles, fine art and hired gigs. But the reality is somewhat messier. Like some colleagues — most notably Roe Ethridge and his comparably sized mid-career retrospective Polychronic — Sassen has long blurred the lines of art and commerce. Many of the same motifs run through both halves of the book: self-portraiture, human forms, bold color, ragged physicality, jarring compositions, a recurring fascination with Africa, where she spent part of her childhood. She’s a master of wry composition, unexpected cropping, and look-twice layering. Many photos could slip easily into either half. If Phosphor’s imposed dichotomy feels artificial, that may be exactly the point. It takes a winking stance against silly labels. High end commissions be damned. You get the sense she’d create them herself, even in an unpaid vacuum.

In any case, Sassen’s career trajectory seems clear: Her work has moved inexorably over time toward abstraction and surrealism. These strains have been evident for a while, but in her early photos they were confined to simple collage, complementary hues, and formal alignment. Since roughly 2017 Sassen’s creative tool kit has broadened considerably. Phosphor’s burgeoning middle section — and its expressive core — features recent work from the past half dozen years. Commercial gigs and personal work meet here in dazzling rush of techniques, invention, experiments, and flat out fun. As always, models create a visual baseline. But Sassen then blasts off into the artistic stratosphere. She paints directly onto prints, rephotographs elements, montages with scissors and/or Photoshop, slices, dices, saturates, colors outside the lines, and generally has a ball. The overall impression is of a mature artist with numerous skills at her disposal, and a thirst to mix and match them freely.

“Maybe I call myself a surrealist,” Sassen is quoted in the opening essay. “I also think of myself as a sculptor.” Whatever the label, she’s found a real groove at mid-career. I won’t say she’s settled into it, or into anything that might be called static. Her process feels fluid, and it’s hard to know what she’ll be doing ten years from now. For the time being, Phosphor lays down a marker. This is a selective survey of where she began, her artistic evolution over time, and a healthy sampling of current or recent work. If the name Viviane Sassen conjured up images of haute couture before, it’s time to think again.

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Blake Andrews is a photographer based in Eugene, OR. He writes about photography at blakeandrews.blogspot.com.

Book Of The Week Hot Mirror Photographs by Viviane Sassen Reviewed by Owen Kobasz Viviane Sassen is one of today's most innovative photographers and this stunning book looks back at a decade of her work, including new collages and previously unpublished photographs.

Hot Mirror. By Viviane Sassen.

Hot Mirror

Photographs by Viviane Sassen

Prestel, Munich, Germany, 2018.
160 pp., 95 color and 9 black-and-white illustrations, 9½x13x½".

Formally, Hot Mirror is a mid-career retrospective. Pulling from Umbra, Flamboya, Roxane II, and more, this new book contains a survey of Vivianne Sassen’s fine art photography to date, with an emphasis on surrealism. Hot Mirror, however, doesn’t feel like a retrospective, or at least not a traditional one.

Sassen’s previous publications were single series, each bound by a concrete thesis. Hot Mirror breaks the mold by drawing a selection of her photographs from the past two decades and are revivifying them with a new context. Arranged asymmetrically and surrounded by a luxurious amount of negative space, the themes and colors are often juxtaposed, evoking a strange dreamlike feeling.

Luxaflex, from Of Mud and Lotus, 2017

The image, Luxaflex, taken from Of Mud and Lotus, shows two people twisted together. Green lines obscure their faces and bodies and the background — leaving just their arms, legs, and hair untouched. It’s as though everything has been censored save their limbs and hair, but her use of green makes it fun and playful. On the opposite page, sits Mirror Man, a much older photo from the series Flamboya. The mirror reflects a grey cinder block wall and a man stands in the gap. He is tilted forward so that his face is hidden behind the mirror. Sassen’s images allow only half to be seen, but the other half is just as important.

“I’m fascinated by what is hidden, but I think it’s fine for it to stay hidden. I don’t need to investigate everything, and that includes inside myself. So, there’s that discrepancy between revealing and concealing again,” she told Robbert Ammerlaan in an interview reproduced in Hot Mirror.

Menthe, from Flamboya, 2007

The subtle thesis of Hot Mirror is surrealism, a movement that Sassen has long referenced as one of her primary influences. In these photographs, the parts can be easily identified — they show ordinary objects, people, and places — but put together, when the viewer tries to really understand exactly what is going on, it starts to break down. There is something off, out of place, like how a dream makes sense mid-dream but becomes absurd in hindsight. But then there is the third stage — when they become beautiful.

“Surrealism is the ability to experience or look at things in a way that's unbiased, free of judgment and convention — almost like looking through the eyes of a child.” — Vivianne Sassen

Spaced throughout the book on a thinner, translucent paper, is a tale titled The Eye of the Eucalyptus Tree. Comprised of poetic text fragments, Sassen recalls memories from her childhood. Only a few lines long, each excerpt describes a moment, sensation, or family tradition — almost like snapshots from a time before the photographer carried her camera.

Fantôme, from Parasomnia, 2010

The last piece of The Eye of the Eucalyptus reads:

“I would dream of baobabs coming to life at night and running around silently. I once found a squirrel on the bottom of a dry swimming pool, by a lodge not far from the Mara River. That squirrel was a bit strange, as it sang a beautiful song about loneliness in a foreign language. When it had finished, I wanted to say thank you, but it gave me a slightly superior look and disappeared down the drain of the swimming pool.”

A confusing dream seems a fitting conclusion to Hot Mirror. Like a Max Ernst painting, the photographs and text are not meant to be clear and intuitive, especially when taken as a group. Through them, however, Sassen is outlining something difficult to describe, something that leaves poets and painters alike tonged-tied.

The book ends with a strong essay by Eleanor Clayton, which gives the reader context for understanding the development of Sassen’s work and its relationship to surrealism. Towards the end of the essay she quotes from the Manifesto of Surrealism by André Breton:

“In this dizzying race the images appear like the only guideposts of the mind. By slow degrees the mind becomes convinced of the supreme reality of these images… The mind becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its degrees are made manifest.”

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Owen Kobasz edits the blog & newsletter at photo-eye. He holds a BA in the liberal arts from St. John's College and takes photos in his free time.