Q&A with a Legend: Roger Ballen A chaotic, beautiful, and disturbing blend of portraiture, installation, and drawing. - Photopolitic15 October 2025
- Sarie Pretorius
- 12 hours ago
- 11 min read
Q&A with a Legend: Roger Ballen
A chaotic, beautiful, and disturbing blend of portraiture, installation, and drawing.
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Some photographs provide answers; Roger Ballen's work has only ever offered me profound, unsettling questions. I can’t recall the exact image I saw first, but I’ll never forget the feeling: the sense of peering into a place both intensely real and fantastically imagined, a psychological landscape given form. His signature "Ballenesque" style, a chaotic, beautiful, and disturbing blend of portraiture, installation, and drawing — completely redefined the boundaries of the medium for me.
Ballen's work taught me that the most interesting truths aren't found in objective reality, but in the staged fictions we create to make sense of our inner worlds. It’s an honor to share a conversation with an artist who has so deeply influenced my own creative path and continues to challenge the very nature of photography.
THE INTERVIEW
CA: The term ‘Ballenesque’ has become a descriptor for a unique visual and psychological style. After decades of developing this language, what does that term mean to you personally, and how do you feel about your name becoming an adjective in the art world?
RB: The term Ballenesque was first introduced by Professor Robert Young in his introduction to my retrospective book of the same name, published by Thames & Hudson. Young identified several recurring elements of my visual language that he felt captured its essence. To be specific, a Ballenesque image evokes a psychologically charged “interior” of animals, objects and hand-drawn marks. In the earlier photographs, these ‘margins of the mind’ may also have been created by human portraits. There is a quality of these “rooms” being cut off from the world — “windowlessness” — which is what makes them like a place located not in the real world, but in the psyche. There are also “elements of disjunction” so that the elements collide in a dream-like or irrational way. This breaks or dissolves binaries or boundaries between qualities such as human/animal and inanimate/real/unreal, which makes the photographs feel at once familiar and also strange. There may also be a sense of chaos created, which is complemented or offset by the harmony of rigorous composition (which is very important to me).
I do find such definitions insightful and thought-provoking! However, I think that attempting to “pin down” the essence of my style (by turning it into an adjective) is perhaps antithetical to the very ineffable quality of the subconscious mind that the images are trying to awaken.
You cannot create a Ballenesque photograph by following a formula — it comes from decades of process, discipline, and surrender to the unconscious. The term can be useful, but it also risks turning a living language into a brand. I would rather the work remain ambiguous, open, and resistant to easy categorisation. For me, Ballenesque only has meaning if it continues to evolve, and I would resist it becoming a cliché of itself — a hollow recycling of its own tropes.
CA: Your early work, like Platteland, had strong roots in documentary tradition, while later series like Shadow Chamber and Asylum of the Birds delve into a constructed, psychological space. Can you talk about the turning point in your process that led you from documenting a reality to creating one?
RB: I have never really thought of my photographs as purely documentary. Even in my earliest projects, they were always artistic statements. In Dorps (1986), for example, I was photographing the small, unmodernised towns of Apartheid South Africa that I encountered during my mineral exploration. On the surface it might look documentary — trading stores, churches, main streets, ornaments, and people — but for me the work was already about going “inside,” both physically and metaphorically. It was in Dorps that I began using flash, found objects like wires and walls, and I started to encounter archetypes that would stay with me throughout my career.
The images in Platteland (1994) were also psychological studies of character archetypes, portraits of people at the edge of a collapsing system.
There was a large shift in Outland (2000). Here the people were no longer simply subjects in front of my lens; they became actors, performing within spaces filled with masks, graffiti, wires, and objects. I was creating not just images of a reality, but images that were their own reality — ’theatres’ of the absurd. So the “turning point” was less a sudden break than a slow evolution, from the traces of the outer world toward the construction of an inner, psychological space.
CA: Your visual language is profoundly unique. When you were starting your journey, which photographers’ work resonated with you most deeply? Were there specific artists who gave you a sense of permission to explore the psychological territories you've made your own?
RB: My introduction to photography came through my mother, Adrienne. She worked for Magnum Agency in New York in the 1960s (a pioneering cooperative which gave photographers rights to their own work as “artworks”). As a child, I came into contact with inspiring photographic artists such as Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész and Elliot Erwitt. Through her, I understood from a young age that photography was not just a technical craft but part of a larger artistic and intellectual world.
I would consider myself to be an open-minded and diverse thinker– I have university degrees in the Humanities, Geology and Mineral Economics. I have had influences from a variety of artistic mediums. I have always been intrigued by artistic genres of absurdist theatre, outsider art, art brut, naivism. I appreciate painters of the “grotesque tradition” like Goya, Bacon or Bosch. I have been influenced by a wide range of other psychologically inclined literary, artistic and philosophical work, such as that of Freud, Beckett, Kafka, Jung and Artaud.
I often insist that Nature is the greatest artist..There was my geology. My scientific training taught me that every surface conceals layers, fractures, hidden histories. Rocks became metaphors for the mind — compressed and fractured and also marked by time. The earth is full of mysteries just beneath our feet and can therefore me likened to the depths of the mind. That insight shaped how I see the psyche and how I create photographs — less as pictures of surfaces than as excavations of what lies buried underneath.
CA: You moved to Johannesburg in the early 1980s. How has the specific social, political, and psychological landscape of South Africa informed and shaped the universe you've created in your photographs over the past four decades?
RB: I think that living in South Africa since the 1980s has shaped my work. Johannesburg, in particular, is a city of tension and contradiction and a psychological atmosphere of uncertainty. I do not know for sure, but maybe that edge seeps into daily life and has given my photographs their intensity and unease. It is not a place of distraction or comfort; one has to be resourceful, and that discipline has sharpened me artistically. At the same time, South Africa offers a physical spaciousness that has allowed me to create environments entirely my own, culminating in the Inside Out Centre for the Arts and the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography.
CA: Your subjects are integral to your work, often existing in a space between portraiture and performance. Could you describe your collaborative process? How do you find your subjects, and how does a scene develop from an initial idea to a final photograph?
RB: I began working with people I encountered on the margins of society, often in the small towns of South Africa. Many of them I got to know over years; they were not strangers to me. I never treated them as models to be posed, but as collaborators who entered into the psychological theatre of my photographs. Sometimes a scene began with an object, a drawing on the wall, or the sudden gesture of a person or animal. From there, I would build the composition — adding or removing props, adjusting lines, balancing the space—until form and meaning came together.
Despite the apparent chaos in many of my images, each photograph is grounded in a strong sense of formal composition. I place great emphasis on visual harmony — on the careful integration of shapes, lines, tones, and spatial relationships. The principle of gestalt is fundamental to my work: the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The subjects play a crucial role in this process. Their bodies, movements, and performances are never isolated but absorbed into the rhythm of the environment, interacting with drawings, objects, and animals to form a unified psychological field. Each of these environments functions like a stage set in the Theatre of the Ballenesque: a container where structure and performance meet. Yet within this frame, unpredictable forces inevitably enter — an animal lunges, a person blinks, a mask slips, light changes. My task is to recognise when these unscripted gestures heighten the psychological tension and weave them into the form. Spontaneity has value only when held inside a structure strong enough to contain it, and it is the tension between order and unpredictability, subject and stage, that animates the final image.
CA: Drawings, wires, and found objects are as much a part of your compositions as the human and animal figures. What role do these primal, graphic elements play in your work? Are they an extension of the subjects' psyche, or your own?
RB: I cannot say that the marks in my photographs are not mine alone, nor the subjects’. They arise from a third space where the unconscious takes form. What I mean by this is’ is that the drawings exist zone where boundaries collapse—the space between my psyche, the subject’s psyche, and the world outside. They are not a reducible to any single source; and they exist in It is not reducible to any single source and they exist in a separate visual-psychological field.
These primal lines play an important part in the dynamic of visual reality: they flatten depth, disturb perspective, and live as independent presences.
CA: As a master of the black and white, square-format print, how do you view the current state of photography, dominated by digital colour, smartphones, and social media? Do you see a place for mystery and the subconscious in an age of image saturation?
RB: We now live in an age where billions of colour images circulate daily on phones and social media, and where AI can generate pictures without a camera, a subject, or even a connection to the external world. Or does it remind us that photography has never been only about reality, but always about the human mind—our dreams, fears, and unconscious as much as the world in front of us? As Susan Sontag wrote, “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality… one can’t possess reality, one can possess images.”
If digital saturation drowns us in superficial pictures, then perhaps the challenge is not to compete with speed or quantity but to create images that stay in the psyche, that operate like psychopomps — guides between the visible and the invisible. Even in an era of endless screens, there is space for photography to reveal what is hidden, ambiguous, and unconscious. That is where its true future lies.
CA: Your work often explores the animalistic and primal sides of human nature, with birds, rats, and other creatures featuring prominently. What is it about the intersection of the human and the animal that continues to be a source of fascination for you?
RB: In my early works like Platteland and Outland, animals appeared as part of everyday life — companions that reflected human existence. Later, in Shadow Chamber and Boarding House, they became estranged presences, unsettling figures in surreal and claustrophobic spaces. By Roger the Rat, the animal was no longer background but protagonist, claiming centre stage in the Ballenesque theatre. My interest in animals has always run deep; I even studied Animal Psychology at university. It is no coincidence that the first exhibition at my museum in Johannesburg, the Inside Out Centre for the Arts, was End of the Game, which examined the history of wildlife destruction in Africa.
Wherever you look in my photographs, there are animals — under beds, on chairs, suspended on walls. You cannot escape them because the animal is deep inside; we come from the animal. In my work, the animal reflects what the human psyche tries to conceal: instinct, fear, vulnerability, domination. At the same time, it represents what we have lost — immediacy, purity and presence. Animals do not perform; they simply are.
By recognising this kinship, we move beyond the illusion of human supremacy toward a more honest and integrated way of being.
CA: Is it true that you began your career as a geologist before dedicating yourself to photography. How, if at all, did that scientific training in observing and understanding the earth's layers influence your approach to uncovering the layers of the human mind?
RB: Geology taught me that what matters is beneath the surface. Just as rocks hold hidden histories so too does the psyche. If I think about it more deeply, geology has revealed to me layers of time, pressure, and fracture reveal deeper truths. In essence, my photographs are excavations of what lies beneath the surface or under superficial realities and experiences.
CA: Looking back on your influential career, what do you consider to be your most important contribution to the history of photography? And as you continue to create, what questions are you currently trying to answer with your camera?
RB: I believe my lasting contribution to photography has been to create a unique psychologically focused aesthetic integrating photography, drawing and installation. This integration has not only made a lasting contribution to the field of art but equally has made powerful commentary about the human condition and its underlying state of being.
CA: Finally, what's next for you? Are there any upcoming projects, books, or exhibitions that you're particularly excited about and that our readers should be aware of?
RB: Spirits and Spaces, my first book in colour was recently published by Thames and Hudson. For the first time, I have used colour to extend the language of the Ballenesque. These pictures are not about documenting reality; they are psychological landscapes. Spaces where chaos, childhood, dreams and creatures of the mind collide. Colour became another tool to reveal what lies beneath the surface of ordinary life. Its more than just a photobook.
Dante’s Inferno, written at the dawn of the fourteenth century, has nourished the imagination of artists and poets for seven hundred years, having been illustrated by various illustrious artists such as: Botticelli, Blake, Flaxman, Doré, Dalì, Guttuso and Rauschenberg. However, never before had a photographer offered his visual interpretations for visualizing Dante’s verses. The Inferno publication to be released in November 2025 will consist of sixty-eight photographs of mine for the thirty-four songs of Dante Alighieri, in the English translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). Published by Postcart from Rome with a preface by Didi Bozzini in collaboration with Marguerite Rossouw.
About Christopher Armstrong
I began my career as a photographer in Los Angeles, eventually moving through the worlds of film, television, and advertising before returning to photography in a new role as an agent and producer. Along the way, I had the opportunity to work for legendary filmmakers like Robert Altman, many of the top production companies in Los Angeles and London, and global agencies including Wunderman, Publicis, and Deutsch. With over 30 years of international experience, I’ve developed a panoramic view of the creative industry. It can be occasionally dysfunctional, but it's always worth sharing. That breadth of perspective informs everything I do, from creative strategy to mentoring emerging talent.
In 2012, I founded PhotoPolitic in Stockholm as a response to the shifting landscape of commercial photography and production. Now operating between Amsterdam and Los Angeles, the invite-only platform connects elite photographers, directors, and digital artists with leading advertising and editorial clients worldwide. Carefully curated and fiercely independent, PhotoPolitic represents talent recognized for both aesthetic excellence and real-world impact.
Today, the PhotoPolitic network includes some of the most respected names in advertising, editorial, architecture, interiors, documentary, reportage, and fine art photography. At its core, PhotoPolitic exists to champion creative integrity in an industry that often compromises it, working only with professionals whose reputations are built on craft, ethics, and results.
©2025 Christopher Armstrong. All rights reserved.