Photography has always walked a crest between reality and fiction, maintaining a precarious balance which, depending upon the stylistic choices of the individual photographer, tilts now towards the documentary, now towards invention; now towards the world as it outwardly seems, now towards its reworking as part of a spatial and narrative construction devised by the […]
Boarding House
A photograph that defies notions of place, subject, or era, can become something quite unfamiliar. Photography’s visual reference points, rendered by the simple process of exposing film to light, map our perception of reality despite the concerns of modern and post-modern theory.
Roger Ballen in Conversation with Doug McClemont
When Roger Ballen talks about his body of work, it is seldom in terms of social commentary. If the personal history of one of his sitters seems unavoidable, Ballen addresses the narrative only in the broadest possible way. To the artist, the images of small-town South Africa contain interplay of light and dark, painterly lines […]
Roger Ballen: Uncanny Animals
Roger Ballen depict an abstracted imaginary space that is inhabited by both animals and people. Mostly within grey, barren cell-like structures, nightmarish scenarios, which are unspecific in their narrative, are enacted.
A Conversation with Roger Ballen
Chas Bowie is a writer and artist based in Portland, Oregon. He is the Arts Editor for the Portland Mercury, and his writings and photographs have appeared in publications such as Res, Anthem, Venus, and Tokion.
Interview with Roger Ballen
In the 90ties your photographs were more focussed on portraiture than today. Is it regardless still important for you to work in South Africa or could you realize these images everywhere?
Disturbing, potent lens of Ballen in mid-life
Disturbing, potent lens of Ballen in mid-life Documentary photographer’s constructed imagery offers no respite to viewers, writes Mary Corrigall.
Roger Ballen’s Shadow Chamber
Seeing Roger Ballen’s extensive portfolio Shadow Chamber – made over the past few years – for the first time, there is often a “before” and “after” in the act of aesthetic contemplation.
States of Mind
Roger Ballen’s photographs confront us with things we fear and things we cherish, then sow confusion between the two, writes Sebastian Smee.
Bleak images make an exhilarating exhibition
Roger Ballen’s technically audacious photography reinterprets the notion that the art form captures ‘the significant moment’, writes Robert Greig.