Umbra

by Viviane Sassen

This latest book by Viviane Sassen, one of the world's most acclaimed photographers, explores the concept of shadow in a series of stunning images. Based on an award-winning exhibition, Viviane Sassen's new book focuses on a common theme in her photographs: shadow. In this book she leads us through a series of thought-provoking
takes on the concept--shadow as metaphor for anxiety and
desire; as a symbol of both memory and hope for the future;
and as an evocation of imagination and illusion. Sassen's
work is renowned for its deft interplay between realism and
abstraction. Here that characteristic emerges in the dramatic
use of light, shadow and color, as well as the adroit cropping
of images and interventions on the prints. This lovely book
brilliantly accentuates Sassen's contrasting color schemes to
reinforce the idea of shadow creating an enthralling tactile and
visual experience.

Genres: Photography

196 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2015

About the author

Sassen was born in 1972 in Amsterdam, and lives there. She studied fashion design, followed by photography at the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) and Ateliers Arnhem.

A retrospective of 17 years of her fashion work, In and Out of Fashion, opened at Huis Marseille Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, in 2012, and travelled to the Rencontres d'Arles festival, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Savannah College of Art and Design, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt and Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Solo exhibitions have taken place at Fotografiska (2017); Foto Kunst Stadform, Austria (2017); the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2017); Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2016); Atelier Néerlandais, Paris (2015); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2015); ICA, London (2015); and Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (2014). Sassen was included on the main exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace, in 2013. She has exhibited in notable group shows at Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2017); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2017); Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg, Germany (2016); Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle (2016); New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); No Fashion, Please! Photography between gender and lifestyle at the Vienna Kunsthalle (2011); Figure and Ground: Dynamic Landscape at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto as part of the Contact Photography Festival (2011); and Six Yards: Guaranteed Dutch Design at the Museum for Moderne Kunst Arnhem (2012).

Sassen was awarded the Dutch art prize, the Prix de Rome, in 2007, and in 2011 won the International Center of Photography in New York's Infinity Award for Applied/Fashion/Advertising Photography. In 2015 she was awarded the David Octavius Hill Medal from the German Photography Academy, and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for her exhibition Umbra. She has also received numerous awards for her publications.

Reviews

[Lisna Atmadiardjo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very challenging (if not disturbing) my obsession of symmetry, minimalism, and neatness in photographs. Those sad-dark-twisty poems by Maria Barnas contradict the colorful photos, plus the super intriguing design, making this photobook by Prestel very very interesting.

I particularly fall in love with the one published by Oodee, in my opinion, fit the poems just right. But this one by Prestel, which treating the photos differently then presenting them in a "what a design!", (again) very very interesting.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Photographs of found shadows (from branches, a leg, a tire) and stylized shadows caused by introduced objects (colored Perspex, a mask). Set off against the hot colors of landscape and textile, there is a place here to cool out and cool on, and to estimate levels of menace, deviance, avoidance, and the authenticity of pose.

The book, designed by Irma Boom/office, is (un)trimmed and bound in such a way that the poems are "hidden" within the leaf — the page can never be fully opened, so the reader has to peek, negotiating a kind of shadow within the construction. Images are sometimes shunted there as well. This feature, along with the unpredictable sequencing, somehow makes the experience of reading this thankfully disrupted, un-fluid. You don't quite know where you are, or were.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sassen's best photobook, and certainly in my top 10-15 of all time.