Sketches — Viviane Sassen: Polaroids Made in Africa 2002–2010

This photobook by Viviane Sassen, published in 2015 by Kominek Books, is part of the Darwin archive because it opens a raw, intimate window into the artist’s early African work and her visual process. Sketches is not a retrospective, but a loose constellation of ideas—fleeting, sensuous, almost overheard—drawn from Polaroids shot during her travels across the continent between 2002 and 2010, during the period of the landmark Flamboya series.

Sassen uses the instant medium not for nostalgia, but for immediacy: compositions are experimental, tactile, layered. The images—children with flowers in their mouths, arms interlaced beneath the beach sun, bodies caught in patterns of shadow and pigment—arrive not as resolved works but as visual thinking in motion. Reproduced as stacks and overlays of images, the book mimics the feel of an artist’s desk or a contact sheet brought to life.

Designed by Sybren Kuiper with a restrained yet sensorial materiality—embossed cardboard cover, black thread stitching—the publication feels like a sculptural object. It’s a minor book in the best sense: modest, searching, and elemental. A physical sketchbook of vision, form, and gesture.

Technical Sheet

Title: Sketches — Viviane Sassen: Polaroids Made in Africa 2002–2010
Artist / Author: Viviane Sassen
Date: 2015
Technique / Printing Method: Polaroid photography, digital reproduction
Medium / Materials: Embossed cardboard cover, stitched binding
Language: English
Pages: Not specified
Publisher / Editor: Kominek Books
Condition: New