Galerie Karsten Greve Cologne is pleased to present a comprehensive solo exhibition of works by the photographer Roger Ballen, who was born in New York in 1950, but has lived in South Africa for more than 30 years. The show focuses on his most recent series, entitled Asylum of the Birds. These photographs are taken […]
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Roger Ballen: Outland
It has become fairly customary to talk about an artist’s work using criteria or facts that have little, if anything, to do with it. In general, the more well-known an artist is, the higher the likelihood there will be talk of his personality or public persona, of his artistic background, or of anything else that […]
Roger Ballen goes back to Outland #2
“I think this photograph brings up an important point. You know, one of the most important things about photography is capturing the moment. The moment is really unpredictable in any real way.”
Roger Ballen goes back to Outland #1
Through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s photographer Roger Ballen spent time documenting marginalized people on the fringes of South African society. While this was not a completely new direction for him, the years nevertheless saw a subtle but incredibly important change begin to occur in his photography.
Inside Roger Ballen’s Mind: A Place of Refuge and Madness
An asylum can be either a refuge or a place of madness. In Roger Ballen’s new book, “Asylum of the Birds,” it is both. His photographs were taken in Johannesburg in a dilapidated house that was inhabited by hundreds of birds – and dozens of immigrants, fugitives or homeless people.
The Descent into the Asylum – Roger Ballen’s new works
“Photography is like going into the mineshaft”, says Roger Ballen, and well he should know. As a geologist, his fieldwork sometimes has taken him 2 kilometers under the earth’s surface, in search of diamonds, gold, and other minerals. These subterranean pursuits have deeply influenced him, supporting his artistic development, which he likens to a psychological […]
Roger Ballen: The Asylum
Today, leafing through Roger Ballen’s 2005 publication Shadow Chamber, one becomes aware of an element that might have passed almost unnoticed when that book first came out. The photographer, whose book Outland had been published in 2001, opened this new volume with four images: a portrait, comparable to those that had initially brought attention to […]
The Roger Ballen Strategies
“I’ve always thought that a believable, genuinely realistic ambiguity constitutes the greatest form of expression. And for different reasons. Firstly, nobody likes the truth of what is going on to be explained to him. And what is perhaps even more important is that nobody actually knows what is real or what really is going on.” […]
Roger Ballen at the George Eastman House
Dream-sense can be unsettling in its dense, archetypal symbolism, and while some will argue that it’s nothing more than the brain defragging the mess of information it must process, it’s the sense that most interests Johannesburg, South Africa-based American photographer Roger Ballen, whose work can be seen at the George Eastman House through June 6.
Gagosian Gallery
No photographic, or even artistic, category quite encompasses the complicated, engrossing, and at times unsettling images in South Africa-based artist Roger Ballen’s new series Boarding House, 2003-2008, several dozen images from which made up this large exhibition.