The Photography of Viviane Sassen

Nungwi. From the Parasomnia series.

Recently I stumbled across the photography of Amsterdam-based Viviane Sassen, and quickly decided that her work is the most graceful expression of sculptural sensibility that I've ever seen in photography. It doesn't hurt that the pictures are gorgeous, or that Sassen treats color like sustenance. While there are definitely some troublesome "otherizing" tendencies in the work (Sassen is a white European artist photographing East African landscapes and black East African bodies), there are also some extraordinary things happening in the pictures formally.
A press release for an Irish exhibition of Sassen's pictures last fall explained that "the title of the series Parasomnia alludes to sleep disorders and occurrences of anomalous and unusual actions....[the images] are playful and skillful manipulations of the physical body to symbolize moments of ambiguity and disorientation...Within the images resides a latent force of sculptural stasis: the power of the body and the world it is held in. In Sassen’s Parasomnia, as with dreams, we are left in a place of uncertainty with an insistence on our own imaginative response."

Parasomnia. From the Parasomnia series.

Ivy. From the Parasomnia series.

I love this idea of photographing the body as a sculpture in space. It seems like a simple one, but Sassen's execution is marvelous. She locates unfathomable edges and--in water or in night air or in clean blue cotton--submerges her subjects as if to collect the impression of their bodies later on. As her press release claims, there are moments of disorientation. But there is also the sense of a profound "settling in", a habitation of self and setting that is hard to distill in a photograph.

Hundred Years. From the Parasomnia series.

Belladonna. From the Parasomnia series.

Winter Playlist

Snowfall, long nights, bright lights. Mellow tunes.

Great Lake Swimmers.............................I Could Be Nothing
The Colour.............................................Silver Meadows
Bat For Lashes........................................Marilyn
Iron and Wine.........................................Cinder and Smoke
The Chapin Sisters..................................Digging a Hole
Kelli Ali..................................................The Savages
Isbells.....................................................Heart Attacks
Mumford and Sons................................Ghosts That We Knew
Margot and the Nuclear So and So's......Broad Ripple is Buring
Gossling.................................................Heart Killer
Grizzly Bear...........................................Foreground
Fleet Foxes............................................Your Protector

Poetry Wednesday

Somniculous

We drag our bed wherever we go. Without it we become
monstrous:
Our teeth ache
and our moods swell and we cave inward,
loving nothing so much as our ball gown skins
(which stand quite well on their own).

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd something not-mine that I love:

You Have to be Careful

by Naomi Shihab Nye

You have to be careful telling things.

Some ears are tunnels.

Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.

Some ears are flat pans like miners used looking for gold.

What you say will be washed out with the stones.

You look for a long time till you find the right ears.

Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,

a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,

and the slow, gradually growing possibility

that when you find such ears

they already know.

Life Updates

Laser tag! Dirty board games! Fire pit! Copious amounts of liquor! All of these things made Christmas with my family in Wadesboro, North Carolina, oodles and oodles of fun. I brought Moody home with me this year, and he managed to take all of the zaniness in stride (although, as it turns out, he is not very good at laser tag).

To top it all off, I received the very good news that an essay I wrote about Chiharu Shiota (about whom I've blogged before) will be published in a Casa Asia book to coincide with the end of the artist’s first solo exhibition in Barcelona! I can’t wait to get my hands on it in March. More updates on this to come!

Overall, this winter break has been extremely restorative, and there are more good things coming up soon. In February, I’ll be returning to NYC for the first time since I interned for Ralph Lauren back in 2010, and I can’t wait to have adventures in my favorite city. There will definitely be reunions with a few beloved Vassar pals, and plenty of arty goodness at the CAA conference. As soon as I get back to Rochester, Moody and I will be goofing off at a Passion Pit concert, and celebrating our second (belated) Valentine’s Day together. So much good!