viviane sassen – Journey Through the Lens

In the previous webinars discussing photography markets, I came across the work of Viviane Sassen. She is a Dutch photographer who is extremely successful in both fine art and fashion photography. Although her genre of photography seems completely unrelated to my own practice in urban photography, there was something about her work that really stood out to me and made an impact.

I was particularly drawn to her 2014 series, Umbra, in which she makes strong use of shadow, contrasts, colour, shadow and lines. When I came across the video below and heard Viviane Sassen describe how and where she discovered her photographic voice, I began to understand that I had been unconsciously drawn to the light and colours familiar to a landscape I had known most of my live, the African landscape, having grown up in South Africa. Viviane Sassen describes that it was only upon spending time in Africa that she connected to her creative voice and it is there that she learned about working with light and shadow, bright colours and sharp contrasts.

Her sensitivity to her subjects while in Africa is so clearly expressed and she acknowledges an awareness of the imbalance in power between her as the photographer and her subjects. Sassen approaches her subjects by gaining their understanding of her intention and that the photography is about concepts that are far larger and more abstract than themselves. She approached these images from a symbolic perspective and this resulted in a powerful series of portraits that made a tremendous impact on me because she has succeeded in capturing the essence of her subjects, somehow merging the present moment, with the cultural and historic inheritance of people and place.

“One of the best ways to appreciate Sassen’s work is through her photobooks. Flamboya merges documentary and fine art to find a new way of looking at Africa, one that is neither exoticising nor straightforward reportage. Parasomnia is a more dreamlike exploration of Africa that draws on those childhood memories and vivid dreams.” (O’Hagan, 2013) Sassen herself encourages photographers and artists to experiment and push the boundaries on creativity, working intuitively to create the magic . I feel truly inspired by her approach to photography and will refer to her work often as I experiment with the use of light, shadow, colour, contrast and line in my own work.

Viviane Sassen talks about her photographic process and how she discovered her creative voice.

Reference: O’Hagan, S. (2013). Fashion photographer Viviane Sassen: a different take. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2013/oct/12/fashion-photographer-viviane-sassen [Accessed 8 Dec. 2019].

The coursework is now focused on an in-depth exploration of the market for selling photography, with a focus on identifying who the potential buyers are, understanding how to sell photography and how to price work for different markets. We explored practical aspects of pricing, writing estimates, production and invoices, as well as terms and conditions.

Our module leader, Anna, presented two live workshops to discuss the various markets and how to break into them. The discussions were intensive and sparked a number of questions, so Anna has agreed to follow up with further workshops on this subject.

We initially discussed the differences between editorial and advertising markets, summing up that the main difference are in the process, result and target audience. Advertising usually has a very specific brief and is about promoting a brand or product, whereas editorial photography is more open to a pitch and is about telling a story or illustrating something. Fashion photography falls into the category of editorial photography and is an example of visual story telling with no text involved. We also looked at how there is some crossover with fine art and fashion photography.

We further discussed the usage of images and discussed licencing as opposed commissions. The conclusion I came to was that licensing is by far the quickest and easiest option for commercial work. Being able to calculate the costs of licensing is an important part of calculating rates for work and a great resource to refer to is the AOP website which has guidance around this and on writing up terms and conditions, all of which are essential as a professional in the industry.

The fine art photography market is predominantly based in Paris and New York and centered around some of the important galleries, and annual fairs and exhibitions, such as the Paris Photo Fair. It is a very difficult market to break into and only a limited number of artists are successful in selling in the fine art industry.

A photographer who has been very successful in establishing a career in both the fashion and fine art world, is Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen. She has done a number of installations, exhibitions and books, and has received numerous rewards. She has developed a distinct visual language and strong personal brand which is one of the reasons she has been so successful. She is an artist whose work I was not familiar with previously but who I will research further as I believe there is a lot I can learn from her photographic practice and apply to my particular genre of photography.

Journey Through the Lens

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Contextual Research – Viviane Sassen

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