The Relics of Susie Cave’s World

For decades, photographer Dominique Issermann has documented close encounters with Susie Cave and her family. Now, these captivating, candid pictures have been brought together in a haunting and beautiful new photo book

A photograph can feel like a holy object. Just imagine how superstitiously dangerous and profane it would feel to desecrate a picture of a loved one. The Roman Catholic Church has a method of calculating the religious worth of holy relics. A first-class relic would be the mortal remains of a saint, for example, the skull of Saint Valentine, displayed inside the Basilica of Santa Maria in Rome. A second-class relic is an object rendered holy by its intimate contact with a saint, such as the Veil of the Virgin Mary (Sancta Camisia), kept in the Chartres Cathedral in France. In my own personal hierarchy of venerated objects, I’ve always believed photographs belong in this tier of precious objects because they require the person’s physical presence. AI can bypass this alchemy – it’s already begun to change our relationship to images – but in creating an analogue portrait, light must reflect directly from the subject – touching them – before entering the lens and leaving an invisible latent image on the film. 

Dominique Issermann has taken thousands of photographs of her longtime muse and dear friend Susie Cave and her family over the years. Documenting her public and private life, the pictures are treasured objects, many of which have adorned the walls of Susie’s different homes. Now, with an accompanying text by her husband, Nick Cave, these images have been brought together in a photo book, Susie. 

The pair met when Susie was a young model. “I’ll never forget. I was 22 years old. I was living and working in New York, and Dominique was in Paris,” she recalls. “I wanted to escape New York when Dominique asked to meet me, so I flew over to Paris, left all my possessions in New York and never went back.” The photographer made an immediate impression. “Dominique is very pretty with blonde hair, smelling of Guerlain Shalimar perfume and wearing a men’s suit. She’s quite tiny and speaks in a very soft voice, but she is a powerhouse; she has this energy – an unbelievable strength. She looked at me and just said, ‘You’re booked for the next year.’” 

That year turned into decades, spanning vast swathes of Susie’s career, as well as momentous events in her personal life – including meeting and marrying Nick, the birth of their twins, Arthur and Earl, and the subsequent dreadful loss of Arthur, aged just 15, in 2015. As an integral part of the fabric of the Cave family, the photographer was present on holidays and at celebrations as well as endless uneventful days and periods of diabolical grief, quietly and unobtrusively documenting their lives together. “Her pictures are an amazing gift,” Susie says. “I've always loved photographs, but they’ve become so important to us. They’re so enmeshed in our personal lives.”

Being so enmeshed, Issermann’s pictures of the Cave family feel uniquely candid and unstaged. “We didn't even know she was taking these photographs a lot of the time because she’s very sneaky like that,” Susie laughs. “That’s why they’re so natural.” A counterpoint to the more formal, staged modelling portraits of Susie is Issermann’s photograph of four figures – Susie, Nick, Earl and Arthur – walking away down a sun-dappled, tree-lined track in Italy. Or the two boys – one blonde, one dark – huddled round their father’s desk. In another photograph, Susie hugs Nick as he rests his arm on a marble fireplace. These are intimate moments. Susie says, “These pictures mean so much to my son, Earl. When he saw the book, he was so emotional because it’s captured all those times we had with Arthur, and it’s incredible to have those photographs because they’re so real. They’re not like standing there having a picture taken; they’re moments we all had together.”

Another photograph captures Susie standing on a swing at the crest of its arc, her body arched to create momentum. It could almost be a fashion editorial, but it’s actually just a picture Issermann took of Susie trying to glimpse Nick’s approach over a high wall during one of their early meetings. “Nick was flying over to Ireland to see me, and Dominique had never met him,” she recalls. “It was before the days of mobile phones and there was only one phone box on the whole island. I’d keep going out to ring Nick and she’d come and find me and pull me out because she’d be like, ‘You should not be phoning him every five minutes. It’s not a good look.’”

Among the many magical pictures in this book, the cover features a particularly enigmatic portrait of Susie. “It’s such a random photo because it’s not set up,” Susie remembers. “Dominique was staying with me in London because we were doing a shoot for French Vogue. We were just testing the light and I had my curlers in. I was looking in the mirror out through my bathroom window at some trees.” It may just be a casual snap, but it wholly embodies the otherworldly beauty Susie has become known for. She continues, “What is unusual about that photo is that, in that moment, I had this really strange feeling of time standing still, and like really strong déjà vu. I went into a trance for a split second. And it’s so strange that that photograph has become one Nick loves so much because I feel like my soul was momentarily exposed. It's like something happened.” 

It’s the first picture Nick ever saw of Susie, and he recalls it being hung on the wall of Susie’s flat in Maida Vale 30 years ago. “I fell in love with it,” he writes. “Of course, I also fell in love with Susie herself.” It’s a testament to the potency of photography; the power they hold over us as relics which have touched their subject. The book also contains a more recent picture showing this portrait in the family’s Brighton home. Nick continues,  “This photograph became a holy image, an icon that would travel with us.”

Susie (words by Nick Cave and photographs by Dominique Isserman) is published by Thames & Hudson