Roger Ballen retrospective in Daugavpils comes highly recommended - Latvian Public Service Media, 23 July 2026
- Jul 24
- 2 min read
Authors: Gundega Evelone (LSM.LV), LSM English (Latvian Public Media)
Photo: Didzis Grodzs
A retrospective exhibition titled "The Other Mind" by renowned American photographer Roger Ballen has opened in Daugavpils, and according to LSM's Gundega Evelone it is well worth a visit.
Although a retrospective, the artist has personally participated in the creation of the exhibition, creating fresh combinations and interpretations of his works, as well as brand new installations adapted for the exhibition.
"The Other Mind: Roger Ballen. A Retrospectve" curator Aivars Baranovskis, when asked how he managed to bring Ballen to Latvia, answered briefly: "I simply wrote him a letter. After some time, he wrote me back."
As Ballen himself says: “My photographs are psychological mechanisms. They reach a point in the human mind that takes them into a new space, outside the standard norms.”
Roger Ballen is a multidisciplinary artist – in his current professional practice he combines drawing, video, installation, sculpture, fusing them into staged situations, which are conveyed to the viewer through the medium of photography. He started as a documentarian, who gradually moved deeper towards imagery, looking for ways to visually show what cannot be clearly expressed in words, but is instinctively felt.
Ballen developed in the experimental art scene of New York in the 1970s, then wandered the world and now resides in South Africa.
"It is very likely that a viewer who has carefully studied Roger Ballen's exhibition from its beginning with the clumsy smiles of boys from all over the world to the very end, trapped in a postmodern nightmare, will immediately want to go outside and stand in the sun. To soak up its light and warmth and be glad that it is simply a nice, beautiful summer," writes Evelone at the end of her lengthy account of visiting the exhibition, which you can find here.
It adds up to "an intense, disturbing, and exhausting journey, and you need to recover after it," she concludes.
The Other Mind: Roger Ballen. A Retrospectve is on show at the Mark Rothko Museum in Daugavpils until August 30th.
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