Pendulous, 2022

‘The body is a tool for me. It is my clay, my material, which I mould into an exciting shape’ – Viviane Sassen

The rise of the ‘feminine awkward’ carries a pivotal contemporary shift for fashion photography bearing new techniques of image making that feature the body. Fashion photography is typically centred around the use of the figure as a whole object to tell stories using clothing. Pendulous employs the fragmentation of the human form directing the attention to cropped sections of the body and adopting gestures inspired by contemporary dance choreography which articulates unspoken meaning. This book assembles carefully arranged diptychs that create suggestive shapes, which prompts new narratives and alters the understanding of fashion images.