In and Out of Fashion

Award-winning Dutch artist and fashion photographer, Viviane Sassen, has injected new energy and a sense of everyday celebration into the field. Listen to an exclusive 5minute interview on LensCulture.

Photographs by Viviane Sassen

In the Netherlands and abroad,

Viviane Sassen is known foremost as an artist, whose somewhat surreal, colorful photographs of Africa won her the Prix de Rome in 2007. Alongside her independent work, however, she has long worked as a fashion photographer. Her fashion work is held in high regard, and she has carved out her own unmistakable style. Huis Marseille is exhibiting a retrospective of her fashion oeuvre over the last 17 years. The retrospective shows images built up like paintings or collages, and which arise in free association and creativity. These are not generally prominent aspects in the cautious climate of today’s largely commercially driven fashion photography, but they are typical of Viviane Sassen’s fashion photography.

Over the last 17 years, Sassen has developed a personal language that is sometimes surreal –with intertwined bodies, sculptural compositions and abstract forms – and on occasion perhaps bewildering, but it is always fascinating and full of energy. Both innovative strength and a surrealistic beauty mark Sassen’s fashion photography. In contrast to her renowned independent work, Sassen’s fashion photography is commissioned work that is created in close collaboration with a team of stylists, art directors, models and make-up artists. This means Sassen can treat fashion photography as the ultimate playground; somewhere she can work quickly and intuitively while enjoying the additional benefits of having a professional team on hand to facilitate her experiments. She calls this her ‘Laboratory’.