Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen - Leopard lady

Technique: Archival pigment print

Artist Biography: Roger Ballen is a South African artist and photographer born in New York in 1950. He is known for his black and white photographs that explore themes such as marginalization, madness and death. He moved to South Africa in the 1970s and began photographing on the margins of South African society, including marginalized people and abandoned places.Ballen has published several books of photography and has exhibited his work in major galleries and museums around the world. He has also directed music videos and worked in collaboration with artists from different disciplines. In his work, Ballen uses photography as a medium to explore the human psyche and the darkest corners of society, creating powerful and provocative images.

 

"Roger Ballen in Color" is the official release of the artist/photographer's color work. For the first time, after photographing exclusively in black and white for over fifty years, the images of this important and original photographer will be seen in a new way. These photographs have been created over the past two years and all were taken in Johannesburg, South Africa, in an environment that can be described as "Ballenesque". Since the mid 1990s, my photographic practice has evolved from using basic sets in homes in the "Outland" series (2001) to sporadic drawings in "Shadow Chamber" (2005) to a more elaborate visual dynamic in "Boarding House" (2009) and " Asylum of the Birds" (2014). The period since the publication of "Asylum of the Birds" has been characterized by the transformation of my work from something documentary to one that integrates other media such as drawing, painting and sculpture through photography. At the same time, I became increasingly involved in video, installation, collage and painting. My goal in working in these other media was, and still is, to produce parallel art forms that expand each other to generate a broad aesthetic that encompasses more things. In 2016, Leica provided me with a digital camera to shoot a video to be released with my Thames & Hudson publication "Ballenesque, Roger Ballen. A Retrospective." When I started this project, I began using the camera for color still images and videos. I was immediately surprised and inspired by the results that I believe have not only expanded my work specifically, but also the field of photographic art. While the images I proposed are shot in color, it might be more accurate to state that they are "muted" or occupy an aesthetic place between monochrome and color. As color by its very nature is seen as real and my photographs have an unreal and dreamy aspect, and in these last photographs an enigmatic visual relationship is recreated. For me it is clear that I inhabit an anomalous position as an outsider and insider. I consider myself an insider in the sense that I am well-educated, well-traveled and aware of the nuances of the photographic/artistic world. In my daily routine, I move from order to chaos, from routine to collapse, from organization to subversion... living in Johannesburg, South Africa, as a First World person, while in a few minutes I can travel to what could be characterized as the Third World. The places where I work are often violent, socially chaotic places. People who have served time in prisons, mental institutions, facing difficult situations or just struggling to feed themselves dominate my world. The spaces in which I work and which are revealed in my images can be defined as unconscious visual embodiments of the psyche. It is clear to me that most people who see my photographs experience the fact that, inexplicably, these images end up lodged in their subconscious.