SUSIE will be available to purchase on hardback from September 16 via Thames & Hudson, and is a visual and lyrical portrait of the British designer, entrepreneur, and model.
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Contributions come from writer and musician Nick Cave, who has been married to Susie since 1999, as well as from photographer Dominique Issermann, book designer Irma Boom and Susie herself.
As well as following Susie’s creativity and relationship with the ‘Red Right Hand’ singer, the book also comes as a testament to motherhood – capturing both the devastating loss of a child, as well as the deep comfort she found in the one who remains.
In July 2015, Susie and Nick’s son, Arthur, died after falling from a cliff near Brighton at the age of 15. The 2019 album ‘Ghosteen’ was written in the aftermath of the tragedy.
“This is a book about love, in all its shades,” Susie and Nick shared. “We are so grateful to our beloved friend, the brilliant photographer Dominique Issermann, who quietly documented our relationship from its earliest days and has made it possible for us to tell this intimate story of family, loss and transformation.
This photo also reflected an artwork that Cave associated with the record, Masaccio’s fresco, ‘Expulsion from the Garden of Eden’. “I thought it would make a great cover for Push the Sky Away, as it felt in keeping with many of the record’s concerns,” he explained, connecting the album’s themes to that of the Old Testament story.
But who is the figure on the cover?
Stood next to Cave in his signature suit on the album’s cover is an unclothed figure, looking like a ghostly apparition in the stark, light room. That figure is his wife, model and designer, Susie Cave.
The shoot taking place was actually not for Cave at all but for Susie and Issermann. “Dominique asked me to go to the bedroom window and open the shutters to let the sunlight in. Susie was changing for the next shot and was naked under her robe and, in a purely improvised act of subversion, dropped the robe as I opened the shutters,” Cave recalled. Calling his friend “the most fast-thinking and attentive photographer”, Isserman got the shot on the spur of the moment. Later, when looking through the images and stumbling across this one, Cave knew it was the perfect cover for the release.
However, this was not Susie Cave’s first time gracing an album cover. Formerly known as Susie Bick, she’s the gothic figure on the front of The Damned’s Phantasmagoria and the glamorous woman on the artwork for The Best Of Roxy Music. In short, that makes her a pretty good omen for great music.
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