2011 Infinity Award: Applied/Fashion/Advertising

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. Since then, she has combined her own artistic work with freelance assignments as a fashion photographer for established and underground publications such as I-D, Purple, Dazed & Confused, Fantastic Man, ;VOGUE France, Another Magazine, V Magazine, Selfservice, Numéro, 10, and POP. Her surprising and innovative image-making has inspired work with international brands, and she has created campaigns for Miu Miu, Adidas, Stella McCartney, Diesel, Louis Vuitton, Eres, and Vitra. Sassen’s work has been shown in France, Italy, the United States, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Austria, and Germany, and in numerous museums in the Netherlands. In 2002 and with increasing frequency during the years that followed, she travelled back and forth between the Netherlands and Africa (where she lived during her childhood) making images from South, East, and West Africa. A catalogue of the collection of African photographs Flamboya (2003–2006) has been published by Contrasto. Viviane Sassen won the first prize of the 2007 Prix de Rome.