Viviane Sassen

Viviane Sassen studied fashion design before pursuing photography at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) and Ateliers Arnhem. A retrospective spanning seventeen years of her work in fashion, In and Out of Fashion, premiered at Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam in 2012 before traveling to Les Rencontres d'Arles, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the Savannah College of Art and Design, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, and Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Her solo exhibitions have been presented at Fotografiska (2017), Foto Kunst Stadform in Austria (2017), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2017), the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2017), Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen (2016), the Atelier Néerlandais in Paris (2015), The Photographers' Gallery in London (2015), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London (2015), and the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam (2014).

In 2013, Sassen participated in the main exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace. She has also taken part in major group exhibitions, including at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2017), the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (2017), Museum für Neue Kunst in Freiburg, Germany (2016), Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle (2016), New Photographyat the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York (2011), No Fashion, Please! Photography Between Gender and Lifestyle at Kunsthalle Wien (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 Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem (2012).

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