Purple Diary

[April 6 2009]

Flamboya, the new photo book by Viviane Sassen on African people

“Asked for a description of her work, Sassen has more than one used the phrase “creating order out of chaos.” This rather factual indication is linked to the technique of her craft and her stylised manner of representing. For a photograph brings life to a halt, causing development and movement to become solidified. The use of bright, contrasting colors and a highly developed graphic eye for surface divisions, lines and relationships lend Sassen’s work an unmistakably aesthetic character. It is pervaded with a timeless beauty inextricably connected with an underlying visual hierarchy that seems sculptural”. From the epilogue by Edo Dijksterhuis

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