Tracing a career of more than thirty years, this celebration of the prodigiously talented Dutch photographer includes vibrantly colored portraiture, landscapes, still lifes, abstract compositions and fashion editorials.

From her early African-inspired work to her more recent experiments in interventionist techniques, Viviane Sassen has gained international acclaim for her striking, dynamic images that explore a range of themes and subjects—from identity, gender, and the body, to race, fashion, and the environment. This retrospective book brings together both well- and lesser-known works and includes pieces from her recent series, “Paint Studies,” in which early photographs are reimagined with ink and painterly marks, and “Venus and Mercury,” a collection of exquisite photomontages based on the history of the Palace of Versailles. Illuminating texts by Dawn Ades, Clothilde Morette, Simon Baker, Damarice Amao, and Dan Thawley make this the definitive overview of an important and ever-evolving photographer.

Viviane Sassen was born in Amsterdam in 1972, and graduated from the Royal Academy of Arnhem in 1997 having studied fashion, photography and fine art. Her work has been published in I-D, Purple, Dazed & Confused, Fantastic Man, VOGUE, Another Magazine, V Magazine, Selfservice, Numéro, 10 and POP. She has published a number of seminal books with Prestel including Parasomnia, Pikin Slee, In and Out of Fashion, Umbra and Hot Mirror. Dawn Ades is a British art historian and academic. She is professor emeritus of art history and theory at the University of Essex. Damarice Amao is a French curator and historian of photography. She is currently a curator at the Cabinet de la photographie of the Musée National d'Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou. She lives and works in Paris.Simon Baker is a British curator, writer, and educator. Baker is currently director of the Maison Européenne de la photographie (MEP) in Paris. Clothilde Morette is a French curator and is currently the head of programming at the Maison Européenne de la photographie (MEP) in Paris. Dan Thawley is an Australian creative director, curator, and editor based in Paris, France.