Ms. Sassen, as a photographer, does art always start with the self?
I think all art is some kind of self-expression! For me, when I'm working as an artist and I have total freedom in that realm, I can totally let go and I can express myself fully — maybe this isn’t always true for commercial work where I have to give the client what they want, but I think even if you make really abstract or conceptual art, it always says something about yourself. I think all artists make self-portraits in some sense.
Has it gotten easier to express yourself through your work over the years?
Well, for instance, I do these large collages nowadays, which can be quite huge, spanning entire walls, they often look quite monstrous, almost like monstrous beings because I work with so many different elements. And I think when I was a young woman, I would not have had the guts to do that, you know? I think you grow over time as a person, as a woman. It takes time to find your voice. Of course, there are also young women who already have this kind of enormous power to just express themselves and go big, but for me, it really took time get there. I had to experience more in life and and go through so many different phases. The transition has been kind of liberating! The woman that I was when I made those early self-portraits, I think she still had a long way to go!
“I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of showing and hiding. In an early interview, I remember I described myself as a shy exhibitionist!”
Your self-portraits were some of your earliest work as a solo artist, just after you stopped modelling to take photos yourself.
Yes, I was working as a model for some time when I was young, and I always felt it was not really for me. I was too shy. I was very self conscious, and I was always working with these male photographers who tried to get something out of me that I was not prepared or willing or able to give. It was often about a certain kind of eroticism, sensuality, or sexuality… I was just so young. I was green as grass, and I felt very awkward with their directions, they would tell me to make love to the camera or pout your lips or pretend that they’re my boyfriend. This was at a time when I was experiencing my first sexual encounters, you know, I had my first boyfriend, and, so I was still very much trying to figure out what that all meant and what the body meant to me, what I was prepared to give or to show. So all of that definitely was important in the sense that at some point I picked up that camera and started making these self-portraits because it was a way to kind of reclaim my own image and my own body.
Is that why your photography often has elements of mystery? Some of your more recent body-focused works actually conceal most of the body completely.
I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of showing and hiding. In an early interview, I remember I once described myself as a shy exhibitionist! (Laughs) So when I would take photos of myself, or even in my art photography, you would rarely see both the face and the body. Even with the collages I mentioned, sometimes the body will be obscured or cut up or it will be just a limb showing or using certain angles or composition to hide something… Thinking of the body is really about transformation. It’s never just the body, you know, it's never just the physical object of the body, there's also this undercurrent which is much more emotional or even metaphysical or deals with the idea of of mythology or the archetype.
Do you think you can sense, for example, your own emotions when you look back at photos you’ve taken of yourself?
Back then I made a lot of portraits where you would see me in difficult positions or kind of hidden, in cold environments, or for instance, I did this whole series of self-portraits in an abandoned hospital, sometimes even with medical elements. My father was a doctor, so he was dealing with with the body a lot, of course, and I think that influenced me because when we moved back to Holland after living in Africa for some years, he had a GP practice in our home. There was always a lot of talk of sickness and death, so for a long time, I had this kind of existential fear of dying. At one point I also got really sick when I was travelling in India, I had this kind of out of body experience, I started hallucinating. For a long time, I couldn't really trust my body. I think there are traces of that in my early my work, hints of that anxiety and fear.
Did making art about it help you through that period?
I think so. I think the camera has been a catalyst somehow, because I use it to understand certain things. Fear, and especially this existential fear of death, is something that is hard to express with words. You can't really grasp it. I couldn't really get my head around it. For me, image is my first language and I felt that through images, I could express that feeling better and come to terms with it.
What else does art give you? How else does it soothe you or feed you or help you heal?
Oh, I just love making art — just the process of making something and being in the moment. I think they call it a flow state, you know, when you just really forget everything else and you're just in the moment… That’s the best. Especially when working with a model or even with a team, I often choose to work with an all-woman team, and you also have this amazing feeling of sisterhood where you can explore new territories together. That’s just wonderful for me.
Do you find more freedom in solitary art-making? Or do both experiences allow for that total liberating creativity?
It's hard for me to answer. Sometimes I just work on my own and shoot on my own without a whole team, and I love that solitary process. But having this group dynamic allows people to bring stuff to the table that I could have never thought of myself. And that's very inspiring as well, I don't think there's more spontaneity between one or the other. Even with magazines and clients these days, you get more freedom than you’d think to experiment. I’ve done crazy things in the past, you can really go everywhere, anywhere. There’s a whole spectrum to my art, and all of them excite me.
Does your process also change with every project? Or do you approach everything with the same open attitude?
Well, when working with clients obviously you have to give them what they asked for, but for the most part, I work in a very fluid, intuitive way. Sometimes I have an idea beforehand, sometimes not. Early on, I used to dream at night, wake up with an idea, and make sketches of it! But for years, I haven't been doing that. Nowadays, I just go to the shoot, and even if I have a very strong concept, even though we do a lot of work beforehand, I try to keep my shoots very playful. I try to create the environment for happy accidents to occur, where I can get into that flow I mentioned. I love to experiment and play. That's when I really thrive.