"I was really taken with Amsterdam-based photographer Viviane Sassen, 36, whose work I saw at the Forma booth at Paris Photo this past November. Her photographs, taken in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, and Tanzania, tease fashion conventions but with really witty and unexpected results, partly because her subjects are all young Africans who seem to have enjoyed collaborating with her. She tends to treat the body as a sculptural element — a malleable shape that combines with blocks of shadow and bright color in arrangements that sometimes read like cut-paper collages, bold and abstract but full of vibrant life."