Viviane Sassen is most known for her Parasomnia series, parts of which were recently included in MoMA’s annual New Photography exhibition, but I recently stumbled across her older Die Son Sien Alles work, which is just as strange and wonderful. Shot during several trips to the townships of Cape Town, they depict the ramshackle inventiveness with which poor black South Africans construct their lived environments.
They fashion wallpaper out of gaudy advertisements and patterned fabrics, and tablecloths from logo-splattered plastic wrap woven together.
The photos themselves cannot be nailed down. Are they portraits? Documentary work? Stage advertising? Conceptual? They engage all those vernaculars, pulling from each their best representational strategies, and in the end capture their subjects in a more humane and engaged way than much photography of Africa. These people seem real, the shebeen drinkers at ease. Life, even as strange and slightly off as it seems to be in these images, is happening.
A book of the work recently entered its second printing, and is available for purchase here.
