Roger Ballen and the transfiguration of the real. A conversation, ANTINOMIES
- Sarie Pretorius
- Jun 20
- 8 min read
ANTINOMIES - Writing and Images - by Mauro Zanchi 20/06/2025
Among the artists in dialogue in the exhibition Mario Giacomelli. The photographer and the artist, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, is Roger Ballen. The American artist has repeatedly recognized the profound influence that the master of the Marches has exerted on his gaze and on his photographic practice. This elective correspondence between the two artists is based on a radical conception of photography that goes beyond the mere documentary representation of reality. For both, photography is not a passive mirror of the world, but an act of vision that transfigures reality. It is not a matter of capturing the existing, but of recreating it through a deeply subjective and introspective process. In their works, photographic matter – whether film, printing at silver salts, or the surface of the image itself – is treated as a living substance, almost flesh, capable of leaving incisive marks in the psyche of users.
This performative and alchemical tradition of photography allows Giacomelli and Ballen to give body to the “not always visible”. Their images do not limit themselves to describing the outer world, but reveal the shadows of the unconscious, the primordial instincts and the existential tensions. Both use black and white not as a simple stylistic or technical choice, but as a privileged language to access a visual destiny that reveals the unspeakable. Their works thus become vehicles of introspection, which allow users to confront each other with another reality, often disturbing but always authentic.
MAURO ZANCHI: The exhibition now underway at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome highlights a correspondence between your work and that of Mario Giacomelli. In your artistic journey, when and where did you find adhesions with Giacomelli’s research?
ROGER BALLEN: I would say that my recognition of a resonance with Giacomelli’s work has gradually emerged, through years of meetings with his photographs and back to them with new eyes. It was not stylistic mimicry or influence in the traditional sense, but rather a deeper, almost intuitive recognition of a shared psychological territory. What attracted me was not only the emotional intensity of his images, but the way he used photography to go beyond the surface of the visible world. In his early documentary works – which immortalize rural landscapes, abstract drawings in the ploughed fields, portraits of the elderly, street scenes and Italian daily life – there is already the feeling that he was not so much documenting as digging. There is always something deep, a kind of latent restlessness or spiritual presence.
MZ: What relationships do you find between some of your photographic works and the latest works by Giacomelli, in particular the series This memory I would like to tell (1997-2000), in which the author maintains a strange relationship with a series of props, including stuffed dogs and birds, a mannequin and a mask? In these photographs, the abrupt cuts, the slight overexposure that reverses the tonal values and the areas painted or scratched on the negative introduce elements of absurd or surreal as a means to address the inevitability of death, the loss and the passage of time.
RB: This memory I would like to tell about Giacomelli goes beyond the documentation to enter a surreal and psychological space. In fact, his use of masks, scraps and scratched negatives breaks the illusion of reality, creating images that seem more dreams or memories than photographs: we share this quality. In many of the works you can see a careful balance between black and white forms – white sheets, black silhouettes, dogs, shadows – placed on complex natural or architectural backgrounds. At the same time, the images are full of interruptions: broken bodies, strange shadows, motionless figures coupled with chaotic signs. This balance between formal structure and psychological collapse is something I feel deeply linked to as a way of accessing unconscious experience: loss, mortality, memory. Giacomelli and I take familiar, culturally or psychologically charged symbols – such as animals, objects, gestures, or visual motifs – and alter them in ways that disrupt or destroy their habitual meanings. We also break visual certainty.
MZ: For the two of you, photography is not representation, but vision, an act that “transfigures reality”. How does this transformative vision manifest in your creative process?
RB: Photography consists in building a visual space in which form, instinct and unconscious converge. I begin by creating a structured environment in which each element – lines, tones, shapes and spatial relations – is carefully composed according to an internal logic. In this space, I invite unpredictable forces that cannot be controlled, but that, when absorbed into the composition, give it life. Even drawing plays a crucial role in this transformation... it disrupts the illusion of realism and transforms the image into a psychological, almost hallucinatory space. In this way, photography becomes a place of transfiguration: no longer a simple reflection of the world, but an embodiment of the enigmatic experience that human beings have of it.
MZ: The photographic matter in your works is described as living substance, almost flesh, capable of engraving the psyche of the viewer. How do you use the physicality of the medium – be it the film, the printing or the surface of the image – to evoke and make tangible the psychological and unconscious dimensions in your work?
RB: For much of my career, I’ve been interested in how photography itself can have its own material presence. The textures of my images – cracked walls, threads, rough fabrics, marks on the surfaces – reflect internal states and try to photograph them in order to give the image a sort of tactile tension. More recently, I started working directly on the surface of my Polaroids, applying paint or ink, not to beautify the image, but to bring the viewer closer to the image, not as something to observe from afar, but as something almost similar to the skin, so as to make it feel “alive”.
MZ: Let’s try to get back into a “performative and alchemical tradition” of photography. How do you conceive of your role as an artist in this process of continuous transmutations? And what rituals or methodologies do you adopt to reveal the shadows of the unconscious in the images?
RB: My process is highly disciplined: rooted in years of working with my visual language and learning to understand the most “unpredictable” elements, such as animals and shadows. I create structured and closed spaces in which chaos can enter without collapsing the image. Transformation occurs when these forces interact in such a way as to reveal something primordial, an unspoken and disturbing truth from the darkest recesses of the mind.
MZ: Use black and white as a privileged language to access deep dimensions, almost to try to understand a visual destiny. Apart from the aesthetic reasons, what are the conceptual or philosophical motivations that bind you to the prevailing use of black and white to reveal the unspeakable?
RB: Black and white eliminates the distractions of the everyday world, removes the patina of realism and brings the image closer to the realm of symbolic and psychological. It allows me to focus entirely on form, contrast, and spatial relationships, which are the foundations of visual language that I use to access deeper, often unconscious dimensions.
MZ: Your works are vehicles of introspection, which put users in front of an inner reality, often disturbing but always authentic. What is your goal in provoking an emotional or psychological response in the audience through images and how do you balance the visual impact with a deeper meaning?
RB: I want the viewer to confront aspects of themselves that normally could be avoided: fear, absurdity, chaos, vulnerability. Perhaps I can say that I see the visual impact – through the bare shape, the tension and surreal juxtapositions – as a sort of entry point for the ultimate goal, which is this psychological dig.
MZ: Considering that Giacomelli has often portrayed characters and environments on the margins, and that you have explored subcultures and enigmatic territories, how does the search for “inner reality” translate into the choice of subjects and scenarios it photographs?
RB: The people and environments I photograph are not subjects in a documentary sense, but extensions of a psychological space that I try to access. These worlds (full of discarded objects, strange drawings, animals and human figures) reflect the unconscious: fragmented, raw and unsolved. My images are not about the individuals themselves, but what they symbolize within a larger inner “theatre.”
MZ: Your search is often permeated with elements of absurd and grotesque. How do these aspects help to unravel the primal instincts and “existential tensions”?
RB: The absurd and the grotesque are not simply stylistic choices: they are essential tools for accessing the deepest layers of the human psyche. They allow me to tear the surface of the newspaper and expose what is underneath. These elements disturb the viewer, giving space to the primal instincts and unconscious fears. The grotesque reflects the fractured nature of the self, its fears, its madness, its sense of isolation. The absurd resists logic and creates a feeling of disorientation, forcing the viewer to confront uncertainty and contradiction. Both in my work and in Giacomelli’s, these qualities are ways of talking about the unspeakable. They open a door to the raw and unresolved truths that exist beyond reason.
MZ: Given the emphasis on the organic nature and integration of each element in your photographs, could you go into more detail than how the formalistic approach translates into the process of selection and composition of the subjects and environments, which you portray to evoke other presences, such as in the Animalism exhibition (at the Slaughterhouse of Rome)?
RB: Despite the apparent chaos in many of my images, every photograph is based on a strong sense of formal composition. I place great importance on visual harmony, the careful integration of shapes, lines, tones and spatial relationships. The principle of gestalt is fundamental in my work: the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When you look at one of my photographs, the elements don’t have to look “isolated.” For example, a drawing, an animal, a figure should interact as a unified field of vision and psychological. In my process of setting up a photograph, I try to cultivate a visual rhythm that holds the image together. In other words, there are relationships between forms that have an internal logic that governs the scene, even if its content resists interpretation.
In this sense, each of these “environments” functions as a container or stage in the Theatre of the Ballenesque. However, within that structured space, unpredictable elements inevitably enter. The animals are moving. People blink. The shadows fall and the light changes. Sometimes, the photograph reveals textures or colors that were not perceptible at that particular time. These elements of the “decisive moment” are part of the magic of photography itself.
MZ: Your approach is similar to that of a “joking” that handles many variables. What is the specific role of intuition and experience in allowing you to recognize and capture the moment when these disparate elements align to create a powerful image?
RB: Intuition, for me, is an experience that has been absorbed so deeply that it becomes unconscious, perhaps even corporeal or visceral. After taking thousands of photographs and studying as many negatives, I internalized the sense of what works and what doesn’t work. My eye, my hand, my whole body perceive when a photograph is taking shape. I don’t need to think, rationalize or analyze. That is the value of practice. I see photographers as athletes: there is nothing that can replace the repetitive act of going out and taking photographs.
MZ: How do vision and your intervention guide the integration of the organic and seemingly random elements you capture, turning spontaneity into a coherent photograph, which actually has an “other” meaning?
RB: My approach is to create a structured field of view, an environment in which each element is formally considered, while remaining open to the unpredictable forces that arise during the photographic process. I do not try to control each variable, but rather to build a frame in which the unexpected can occur without disturbing the visual integrity of the image. My responsibility is to recognize when these unforeseen elements, whether it is a moving shadow, the sudden gesture of an animal or the emergence of an unexpected texture, can be absorbed into the structure in order to increase its psychological tension. For me, spontaneity only makes sense when it is integrated into a form that can contain it.
Curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Katiuscia Biondi Giacomelli
Rome, Palace of Exhibitions 20 May to 3 August 2025
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