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| Viviane Sassen, Etan / mint 21:00, 2013, Etan / mint 12:00, 2013, Etan / mint 15:00, 2013, c-print photographs |
ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) London
has a peculiar show currently on display and that is Viviane Sassen’s newly
installed, Pikin Slee. It is a
photography show and Sassen is a type of photographer that hinges on the art/fashion
line with rare aplomb. She is hired by brands like Miu Miu and Stella McCartney
but has also won the Prix de Rome. What does that mean? Well nothing besides
proving that she is certifiably in the mix within these worlds and one can
start thinking about how fashion vortexes contemporary photography, but this
idea and bio-bites are not the thing that is complicated. Let’s forget I said
anything about that and enter into this show with the vague blankness about context,
which is exactly how I arrived to it.
This is a photo show, and a rare one at
that, as it is shot with analogue film for the most part and I have to say,
maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks on me but you can just feel the
difference. Digital film will just never, ever have that embedded tone that
analogue does. It is a different set of chemicals and processes and for me it is like
comparing marble to 3D printing. Anyways, there is a suite of selected
photographs that are of objects, barely discernable figures that are facing
away and highly focused geometries of space, shadow and color. There is a subtlety
to the works and a feeling of placement within each frame. This occurs even in those
that include signs of nature like water, which one would suppose, is not so easily
manipulated. Throughout the photographs there is sense of fixation, a staring
gaze that looks so long it makes the eyes tear up. It is a mix of this intensity
of gaze with a formal knowingness and imposed sophistication that makes these
photographs so easy and desirable to look at. The strength of the photos should
be duly noted as it is poorly installed in the lower gallery space. I have
decided to not hold my breath for a well-mounted show at ICA for if I did I
would have long ago been sent to the morgue.
That being said, what the photographs are
taking photos of is another set of issues. Pikin
Slee refers to a village in the Upper Suriname River within the Surinamese
rainforest, which was a former Dutch colony in the Guianas and the current
inhabitants, the Saramacca, are descended from plantation
slaves from this area. Sassen first visited here in 2012 and was, “intrigued by
the village and the inhabitants.” This statement is pulled from the show’s press release and reading this was the first indication that this was a show shot
by an outsider and by a white person.
Now things get a bit more complicated and
uncomfortable. As I previously said, I was not all too familiar with who
exactly Sassen was upon entering the show. Her name was familiar to me, as I
like both art and fashion, but seeing the photographs, which are beautiful and
thoughtful in many ways, brought up a lot more issues then just seeing an art
show.
The role of the photographer is one of
authority and of outsider. There is a remove in the apparatus of the lens and
of the camera, which positions the photographer outside of the presented focus
even if they are in the shared space. This is a constantly intriguing concept
and one that makes the form of photography such a compelling medium. Now, the
photographer being this outsider but also director of the frame (in this type
of photography) makes what is in the frame passive. You can see and feel
this in the show’s images in the ways they are composed and styled. In these
images Sassen has taken the “mundane” (again from the PR) everyday objects of
the Saramacca people and captures and
composes them into a poetics of form. She also does this with the people,
creating silhouettes in some instances like that of Etan / mint (2013) which is the same person in three degrees of portraiture,
or she has makes them nearly invisible sculptural pedestals like Vela (2013) where the back of a young
boy is barely perceptible and has a white slash of tape diagonally across it and
Alisi, (2013) in which you can barely
discern a neck and head which has Cassava powder and palms stacked on top of it.
So what is happening here? One, these
compositions create attractive and at times stunning images. Two, there is an
unmistakable ethnographic gaze and purpose to these images. Is this second
thing okay to do in order to achieve the first? I am not sure. To unwind this
question, learning more about the subject and the photographer may be of use.
Sassen was born in 1972 in Holland but lived
in Kenya for three years as her father was a missionary doctor. She returned to
Holland when she was six. In various articles, most concisely this recent one in The Telegraph, this root experience with Africa is central to Sassen’s
narrative. Actually reading this article and others like this made the whole ‘white
women photographing former Dutch plantation village’ even more suspect but also
lead me to other ways of thinking about this show.
It led me to think about ideas of
authorship and permission. Sassen’s mere three years as a child in Africa has
given to her, and hence her art, an expanded bracket in which her art is
allowed to reside and explore which includes the retroactive colonial gaze. Her
connection, attachment and sense of being and belonging to Africa is something
she conditions and authenticates her work with and this presentation and
framing of biographical/lived history amends as well as allows Sassen to be an
outsider both in the Saramacca community
and as a photographer. The more I think about it the harder it is to swallow
but I am also very wary of knee jerk reactions to such massively complex issues.
Also, who am I to say or judge Sassen’s
attachments and relationship to the subjects she is photographing? I don’t know
so I have to give some leeway to this whole thing. In addition, the way Sassen photographs is
not even really about this village. In this series and in her more fashion-y
works there is a muteness to the subjects and to the objects. It is all
glorious surface and more then anything it is all really about Sassen and the
tale she tells of herself.
This is possibly why I am not getting too
bent out of shape about her declared investment and curiosity to the
Saramacca community who, “are isolated from the outside world, living without
running water, electricity, roads or the internet,” because there is a lack of
any deep substance and that shallowness is not bad per se but it keeps it all
so safe, so beautiful and so uninvested.
