Friday Feels Like: Flamboya

The pattern, those colours, and all of that vast light. ‘Flamboya’ is a series of images taken by photographer Viviane Sassen, of her time spent in Africa. They are both wild and secretive. I can’t get enough.

‘Flamboya’ refers to the ‘Flamboyant’ tree which blossoms in December and spatters the landscape across East and South Africa with countless deep red-and-orange flowers. Yet, maybe this name constitutes the sole remaining concession and reference to an exotic image of Africa in the history of a body of work that otherwise helps challenging this enduring conception. Shot in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, the ‘Flamboya’ photographs stand as paradigmatic for Sassen’s new way of looking at Africa – one devoid of sentimentality and that through poetical metaphors acknowledges the challenges and drawbacks of its complex reality. 

With the help of leaves, cast shadows or even turning their back to the camera, Sassen’s models in her collection of photographs ‘Flamboya’ anticipate and prevent themselves to become the object of the inquisitive gaze of photographer and potential viewers alike. Sassen’s models are cast as individuals aware of the ritual that constitutes the act of being photographed and actively participate in it. This dimension mirrors Sassen’s way of working. Almost none of the individuals featured in her work are professional models, they are simple passers-by met on the street or other public places. Yet, Sassen’s work is not strictly documentary. Rather than being interested in the features of a specific individual, she aims at producing a kind of archetypal image that she composes (she privileges the verb, to compose, over the more commonly used, but in the case of the description of her work inadequate, to stage).

Read more at This Is Paper.