On a table of photographs and printed passages, nick cave’s words sit beside images that were taken across years of friendship and collaboration. The book, titled SUSIE, brings together those images and texts in a single, hardback volume available from September 16 from Thames & Hudson.
What is Nick Cave’s contribution to the book?
Nick Cave contributes written pieces and lyrics to SUSIE. The writer and musician, who has been married to Susie Cave since 1999 and who first met her in 1997, offers words inspired by his partner over decades. He and Susie shared, “This is a book about love, in all its shades. ” In an earlier reflection included in the material, Cave wrote: “Twenty years on and I am still trying to define Susie… but it’s a losing battle. I have come to see that there is a wild and mercurial energy within her that my words will never contain, and that this bright energy is connected to her own singular and restless fascination with the world. It has little to do with me. ” These statements are presented alongside images that have accompanied the couple through their life together.
What does the book reveal about Susie Cave?
SUSIE is described as a visual and lyrical portrait of Susie Cave, framed around her roles as a British designer, entrepreneur, and model. The photographs, drawn from years of work by Dominique Issermann, track Susie’s creativity and her relationship with the singer known for “Red Right Hand. ” The volume is also presented as a testament to motherhood: it captures both the devastating loss of a child and the deep comfort found in the one who remains. The book references the loss of Susie and Nick Cave’s son, Arthur, who died after falling from a cliff near Brighton at the age of 15 in July 2015, and it notes that the 2019 album Ghosteen was written in the aftermath of that tragedy. The material emphasizes how personal grief and artistic response have been intertwined across years.
Who made the book and what roles did they play?
The book is a collaboration. Dominique Issermann, a longtime friend of the couple, supplies photography gathered over years of documenting Susie Cave and her life with Nick Cave. Irma Boom served as the book designer. Susie Cave contributes her own recollections, and Thames & Hudson produced the hardback edition. Tristan de Lancey, publisher and creative director at Thames & Hudson, called the work “a gem of a book, appropriately conceived and realised, and one which will captivate their many fans. ” The couple thanked Issermann, Irma Boom and Thames & Hudson for their care and respect in creating the volume.
The material in SUSIE places images and words side by side: Issermann’s long view as photographer, Irma Boom’s shaping of the book object, and Nick Cave’s texts that stretch back to the moment the couple first met. Nick Cave has written that he spent decades trying to capture Susie in song and poetry, acknowledging the difficulty and the persistence of that attempt. In 2024 he reflected on Susie’s decision to close her fashion brand, The Vampire’s Wife, writing that the effort had been an act of processing grief.
For readers, SUSIE promises an intimate archive of a partnership that has endured creativity, public attention and private sorrow. The voices gathered in the book — the photographed moments, the designer’s craft and the lyricist’s attempts at definition — form a layered portrait rather than a single explanation.
Back at the table where photographs and pages sit together, nick cave’s passages and Dominique Issermann’s images gain new weight: they are not only records but pieces of an ongoing conversation about love, loss and making. The book invites readers into that conversation and leaves its central subject — Susie Cave — both seen and, as her partner once admitted, still beyond complete capture.
