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Roger Ballen (born April 11, 1950) is an American artist living in
Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...
,
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
, and working in its surrounds since the 1970s. His oeuvre, which spans five decades, began with the documentary photography field but evolved into the creation of distinctive fictionalized realms that also integrate the mediums of film, installation, theatre, sculpture, painting and drawing. Marginalized people, animals, found objects, wires and childlike drawings inhabit the unlocatable worlds presented in Ballen's artworks. Ballen describes his works as existential psychodramas that touch the subconscious mind and evoke the underbelly of the human condition. They aim to break through the repressed thoughts and feelings by engaging him in themes of chaos and order, madness or unruly states of being, the human relationship to the animal world, life and death, universal archetypes of the psyche and experiences of otherness.


Biography

Ballen was born in New York City to Irving Ballen and Adrienne Ballen (née Miller), and was raised as Jewish. His father was an attorney and the founding partner of McLaughlin, Stern. His mother was a member of the famous photo agency Magnum from 1963 to 1967 prior to opening the Photography House Gallery with Inge Bondi in New York City in 1968. Ballen became acquainted with the photographs of Andre Kertesz,
Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with tr ...
,
Paul Strand Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century ...
, Elliot Erwitt, Bruce Davidson and
Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as ca ...
either from published photographs in albums or through personal acquaintance. He attended Scarborough School, New York, and went to Camp Stinson during his childhood summers. At age 13, he received his first camera, and was soon after employed for a first commercial job of photographing McDonald's, Mamaroneck, New York. Ballen was interested in the realism of Rembrandt from a young age, and was drawn to photographing elderly men. He recalls that one of the most "vivid and pivotal moment in his life occurred in 1968 when isparents gave him a Nikon FTn camera for ishigh school graduation. On the very same day ewent to the outskirts of Sing Sing Prison near New York city to take photographs". He later studied psychology at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
, which was an epicenter for the 1960s counter-culture. Here, he was exposed to R. D. Laing's anti-psychiatry movement, Jung's concept of the "
collective unconscious Collective unconscious (german: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is popula ...
", the
Theatre of the Absurd The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post– World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style o ...
(
Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that span ...
, Beckett and Ionesco) and existential philosophers, such as
Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
and
Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
, all of which came to be formative in the development of his artistic style. During the summer of 1969, he photographed
Woodstock Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aq ...
, a series which was published in the ''New York Times'' 50th anniversary of the iconic music festival. Ballen notes that capturing Woodstock "played a role in isgetting to know the human experience, human endeavour, finding the moment, working with people, searching in difficult circumstances for something that stood out. If I had to say what are important aspects that run through the work, it's trying to come to terms with pure chaos." Ballen made his first film ''Ill Wind'' after completing a course in film making in 1972. After the death of his mother Adrienne in 1973, he, like many of the counter-culture, developed existential longing in response aversion to the materialism of Western society and his suburban upbringing. He spent the subsequent five months Art Students of League of New York. Here, he painted
art brut Art Brut are a Berlin-based English and German indie rock band. Their debut album, '' Bang Bang Rock & Roll'', was released on 30 May 2005, with its follow up, '' It's a Bit Complicated'', released on 25 June 2007. Named after French painter J ...
, primitivist, paintings, that according to his teacher, "belonged in the Stone Age". In the autumn of 1973, yearning to find Conrad's "heart of darkness" and Eastern nirvana, he left embarked on a five-year journey, that would take him by land from Cairo to Cape Town; Istanbul to New Guinea (1973-1978). On this trip, he continued an ongoing interest in taking pictures of enigmatic men against dramatic surfaces of shrines, temples and markets. He also began a series of 'field photographs' of streets, earthen paths or walls (inspired by the colour field painting movement) and developed an interest in observing the life of young boys. He kept Kodak Tri-X or Plus X film a green canvas knapsack which he would tie to his legs during meals or overnight train rides or tied to hotel bedposts. He processed the film and would send it to his father in New York. On this trip, he arrived in South Africa, where he met his future wife, an artist, paper-maker and art teacher, Lynda Moross, whom he married in 1980, and had twins, Amanda and Paul, in 1989. These travels also spurred on his first photographic book entitled ''Boyhood,'' which was a series of universal, iconic images of boys that Ballen had encountered while seeking to recreate his childhood in the adventure of travel. Disillusioned by the idea of commercial photography, Ballen enrolled at the
Colorado School of Mines The Colorado School of Mines, informally called Mines, is a public research university in Golden, Colorado, founded in 1874. The school offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, science, and mathematics, with a focus on en ...
in 1978, where he received in PhD in Mineral Economics in 1981. He permanently settled in Johannesburg in 1982, where he worked as a self-employed mining entrepreneur until 2010. This profession took him into the South African countryside in which he travelled to remote small villages called "dorps" and rural areas referred to as the "platteland", in which he photographed the marginalized whites who once privileged from Apartheid, but who were now isolated and economically deprived. During this time, he worked closely with his master printer and friend, Dennis da Silva. After 1994, he no longer looked to the countryside for his subject matter, finding it closer to home in Johannesburg, where he continues to work. Since 2007, he has worked closely with his art director, Marguerite Rossouw. In 2018, Ballen received an Honorary Doctorate in Art and Design from Kingston University. In 2008, the Roger Ballen Foundation was founded to promote the advancement of education of photography in Africa. From April 2020, it will be housed in the Roger Ballen Centre for Photographic Art, Forest Town, Johannesburg.


Ballenesque aesthetic

Ballen's early street photography and the psychological portraiture of ''Boyhood, Dorps'' and ''Platteland'' was influenced by the work of Cartier Bresson,
Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...
, Diane Arbus and Elliot Erwitt. The distinctive "Ballenesque" style of his documentary fiction (from 2000 onward), has been said to reference the artistic genres of absurdist theatre,
outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrate ...
,
art brut Art Brut are a Berlin-based English and German indie rock band. Their debut album, '' Bang Bang Rock & Roll'', was released on 30 May 2005, with its follow up, '' It's a Bit Complicated'', released on 25 June 2007. Named after French painter J ...
, naivism, photographic
surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
and the photographic grotesque. He has also said to have been influenced by a wide range of other literary artistic/philosophical work, such as that of Beckett, Kafka,
Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phi ...
and Artaud. Robert Young coins the term "Ballenesque" to refer to the unique qualities of Ballen's work that mark and identify it as his own. Young identifies four elements, that, in their "various shifting combinations and relations, together make up the constituent factors of the -esque factor." These include:


Prehensile portraits of the underprivileged

Although present as Ballen's work has evolved, the presence of the marginalized subject is a feature of much of the artist's earlier work. Ballen has emphasized his works do not have a sociopolitical agenda; they rather make a psychological and aesthetic statement . He has also stressed that these subjects are not anonymous; he has developed close friendships with them over the course of the history of working with them:
"For many of the people I have worked with over the years, the bond we established while working together, gave them a sense of purpose and meaning. On a typical day, I might receive twenty or thirty phone messages, some asking me when I am going to visit next, some making requests for food or medicine, and others reminding me that it is someone's birthday. In a single day, I can be a doctor, a lawyer, a priest and a social worker."
For Young, however, the distinctiveness of these photographs does not lie in the mere documenting of these "others", but rather, by the fact that these subjects are captured in such a way that they feel they "look back" at the spectator. Ballen's square format, shallow depth of field and space, confronts the viewer with a closeness to, and simultaneous inaccessibility of these people, who often seem to have "psychic disturbance". This remoteness is cultivated by the way in which they do not leave their often bizarre, domestic or theatrical, mysterious settings. For Young, that we cannot engage in empathy, sympathy or self-discovery; we merely submit to looking at their "transfixing gaze".


Windowless walls

This "remoteness" of the places of these inaccessible subjects is evoked because the spaces in which they appear are otherworldly—they exist in the realm of the photograph but do not seem to reference actual locations in everyday reality. Young writes: "there is no world that we can reference here." Ballen's use of black-and-white photography up until 2018, contributes powerfully to this transformation. He writes: "Black-and-white is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive. Black-and-white is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality." Young further notes that the claustrophobic two-dimensional planes of the photograph itself are inscribed with drawings, marks and lines. From the early 90s onward, they appear in Ballen's photographs in wire (antenna lines electrical cords, twisted cable, baling wire, woven fence, coat hangers and snippets of anonymous strands). These mysterious closed rooms have been referred to by Ballen as "visual embodiments" of the 'place' of the subconscious mind, and as set in which people and animals present themselves and interact with objects and drawings; moments preserved by the stillness of the photograph. He also emphasizes that these worlds are an ''artistic'' reality, in which there is a conversation and interaction of visual elements to create formal harmony. Ballen seems concise form and complex meaning in his images. He writes: "It's not so much a matter of content; it's also a matter of form. I am first and foremost a formalist. I always say that the form comes before the meaning. Before I think about the picture; before I think about pushing the button, I have to feel that the thing is an organic whole, that the forms integrate in some crucial way."


Recurring sets of "aleatory images"

One feature of the subconscious replicated in Ballen's psychological realms is the presence of the uncanny: the juxtaposition of incongruous, or unexpected, inexplicable elements to produce "new meanings that have yet to be formulated" and mimic the irrationality, free association and symbolic functioning of the unconscious mind. Didi Bozzini wrote that the relation between Ballen and his subjects disrupted the "laziness of our everyday gaze", thereby referring to the way in which his works subvert visual schemas, syntax or narratives. Young writes that this coming together or "assemblage" of random elements as if by chance encounter can be deemed as "aleatory because it as if they have been put together by a throw of dice." They become absurdist because there is no context for their appearance or explanation of any relation between them, leaving them hanging in... a limbo of alienation". This anarchy in meaning is also extended to the way in which the natural order of things and social norms are subverted. For these reasons, Rhodes employs
Bakhtin Bakhtin (Russian: Бахтин) is a Russian masculine surname originating from the obsolete verb ''bakhtet'' (бахтеть), meaning ''to swagger''; its feminine counterpart is Bakhtina. The surname may refer to the following notable people: *Ale ...
's concepts of the "carnival" and the "
carnivalesque Carnivalesque is a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos. It originated as "carnival" in Mikhail Bakhtin's ''Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'' and was further develope ...
" to enter the Ballenesque aesthetic, whether that be in his photography and film, or drawing and installation. Carnival is characterized by the idea of the world turned upside down, when socially established rules are reversed, and the natural order is loosened. As a result, it is also marked by an embrace of the grotesque and the absurd." Young links this to the chaos evoked by the way in which Ballen's photographs created a contiguity between natural and unnatural worlds, human, animal and inanimate objects, such that they are on the "same plane of being". He writes that "All things are precipitated into an empty, degraded limbo of waste, of refuse, or debris or decay, where they live together as equals but without any relation between them." Ballen writes: "There's an aspect of the subconscious sense of things going out of control, being on the margin, not being able to control life in any real way. Things just fall apart. It is also enhanced by the decay and disintegration of things into the pervasive dirt. Dirt is an ever-presence in Ballen's work. As Warner Marien puts it: "Stains, infect surfaces, mildew climbs walls and artificial light accentuates soiled people and things. The indoor presence of animals like pigs, chickens and goats not only adds to the grime, it evokes physical and spiritual decay." This means that high-flown, abstract spirituality is incarnated in the earthly and material.


Dark junctures of disjunction

Together, these elements, cultivate worlds that no longer reside in the realm of the 'real', or veridical perceptual experiencing. In fact, Ballen's photography moves away from the traditional role of photography—to replicate or document the world we recognize. Instead, through his visual vocabulary and integration of elements, he moves into the realm of the abstract. Rhodes writes that is medium is "faithfully designed to represent visual reality, yet the realities he records are by turns absurd, transgressive, ethereal and uncanny.


Works

Ballen's work can be segmented into several periods, each of which comprises published photographic series:


Documentary (1968–2000)

As a student at Berkeley, Ballen captured the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
and the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. He photographed ''Woodstock'' in the summer of 1969, producing a series of photographs that were only published recently in the ''New York Times'', on the 50th university of the revolutionary music festival. In his first publication, ''Boyhood'' (1979) Ballen presented a series of photographs of boys (chosen from 15000 images), shot during his four-year quest across the continents of Europe, Asia, Central and North America. The book captures archetypes of this universal brotherhood (from Nepal, to Indonesia, Israel to America): "their adventures, games, dreams and mischief." In ''Dorps: Small Towns of South Africa'' (1986), Ballen documented the small towns and villages in unmodernised "hinterlands" of
Apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
South Africa, visited during his mineral exploration. The book contains weathered portraits of the corners, artifacts, trading stores, churches, main streets, signs, ornaments people and interior, dilapidated columns. Ballen has often stated that ''Dorps'' was his most important project in that he went "inside" metaphorically and physically, started using flash, found objects such as wires and walls. He also encountered the archetypes that he would develop over the course of his career. The project was explored in a 1986 programme by the South African Broadcasting Commission, with an episode entitled ''Dorps'' (1986). The poor white came to the fore in ''Platteland'': ''Images from Rural South Africa'' (1994). Here, Ballen presented tragic portraits of these people, who were facing political and economic anguish at the demise of an Apartheid system specifically designed to elevate them and guarantee government employment. As psychological studies of "character archetypes", the photographs were described by the photographic critic,
Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...
"the most impressive sequence of portraits
he'd A contraction is a shortened version of the spoken and written forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters and sounds. In linguistic analysis, contractions should not be confused with crasis, abbreviations ...
seen in years". The book also marked the beginning of Ballen's use of the middle format camera and flash, as well as the deliberate choice of a square negative and black-and-white film.The SouthBank Show aired an episode on the book in 1995 entitled, "Platteland".


Theatre of the absurd (2000–2008)

Ballen gained international acclaim from his next series ''Outland'' (2000)'','' where these psychological studies moved from documentary photography into realms of fiction. The characters become actors who perform on elaborate stage sets, or dark or discomforting tableaux, with poses, masks and props. Graffiti and wires dangle haphazardly, and elements are more deliberately placed and formal elements structure the composition so as to enhance the allusion to "universal and metaphorical scenarios". ''Outland'' was named Best Photographic book of the year at
PhotoEspaña PHotoEspaña, the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts of Madrid, is a photography forum that began in 1998. The Festival’s program presents work by Spanish and international image-makers. It runs an awards programme with sev ...
2001, Madrid, Spain and Ballen the Photographer of the Year at Rencontres d' Arles in 2002. An expanded edition of ''Outland'', containing 30 previously unpublished pictures, was published in 2014. A film, entitled ''Roger Ballen's Outland'', directed by Ben Jay Crossman, followed the book in 2015. In ''Shadow Chamber'' (2005), Ballen's work made leaps into a metaphoric, surreal dimension with multiple conscious and subconscious meanings: "ambiguous images of people, animals and objects posed in mysterious, cell-like rooms. The images focus on the interactions between the people, animals and objects that inhabit mysterious rooms." A blurring between fact and fiction, and Young's notion "aleatory image", is created by the way in which the artifacts, scribbles, wires, dogs, rabbits, kittens and subjects that hide (in couches, shirts or boxes), interact in unexpected ways. As a consequence, this project ushered Ballen's surrealism, and the integration of documentary photography with art forms such as painting, theatre and sculpture, venturing into the realm of abstraction. As Sobieszek writes in his introduction to the book: "To discern fact from fiction in this work may be simply impossible; to tell acting from real life may also be; to bother with such discernment may not be only futile but missing the point." Saskia Vredeland directed the film ''Momento Mori'' (2005) as an accompaniment to the project, which was supported by the
Netherlands Film Fund The Netherlands Film Fund ( nl, Nederlands Filmfonds) is a subsidy fund for Dutch film productions and was founded in 1993. The Netherlands Film Fund is itself mainly subsidized by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. In 2007, the t ...
and screened at the
Netherlands Film Festival The Netherlands Film Festival ( nl, Nederlands Film Festival) is an annual film festival, held in September and October of each year in the city of Utrecht. During the ten-day festival, Dutch film productions and co-productions are exhibited. Be ...
in 2006. ''Boarding House'' (2008) comprises over 70 black and white images. They are tableaux with a greater emphasis on drawn and sculptural elements, and a sense of collaboration between the artist and his subjects, although the subject starts to disappear. Ballen photographed his subjects at a house in a secret location on the outskirts of Johannesburg so that the images became greater metaphors for spaces in the mind. Ballen notes that, in photography, the "human face is an all-encompassing feature in trying to understand the meaning of the work. Thus, if there is no face in the image, the other elements in the photograph have less of a change of being noticed." Young writes that " Boarding House, the perspectives and images become more two-dimensional, more avowedly pictorial though at the same time with greater violence. This is a private interior imaging the necropolis of a world outside that is only too intimate and real."


Psychological (2014–2016)

In ''Asylum of the Birds'' (2014), Ballen further explored his mysterious photographic spaces as a refuges and prisons. In these worlds, people and animals' live side by side, and there is an ever-presence of birds, who perform in the sculptural and decorated interior. In the images, "caged heads and birds are positioned against nightmarish, collage-like backgrounds, and mannequins and headless torsos assume contorted positions". A film, entitled Roger Ballen's ''Asylum of the Birds'' (2014), was made by Ben Jay Crossman. Ballen describes that the "house" in these photographs is a place of a landlord who allowed birds he collected to fly all over the house, cage-less. Ballen writes:
"The house is full of birds, ducks, chickens, pigeons, doves, whatever, different birds and they're all over the house, flying from one room to the next... e people that live in the house are people from different aspects of the streets in South Africa—some people come from other places in Africa, some are unemployed, some are products of poverty, violence and anything else. I interacted with these birds and animals to create these photographs."
In ''The Theatre of the Apparitions'' (2016), inspired by the sight of hand-drawn carvings on blacked-out windows in an abandoned women's prison, Ballen (in conjunction with his artistic director Marguerite Rossouw) began to use different spray paints on glass and then 'drawing on' or removing the paint with a sharp object to let natural light through. These photographs resemble prehistoric cave-paintings: the black, dimensionless spaces on glass. Fossil-like facial forms and dismembered body parts coexist uncomfortably with vaporous, ghost-like shadows. In an accompanying film animation, Roger Ballen's ''Theatre of the Apparitions'' (2016), Emma Calder and Ged Haney created an animated theatre of the book's dismembered people, beasts and ghosts, dance, tumble, make love and tear themselves apart a nightmarish subconscious world.


Collaborations and Experimentation of with Other Media (2014–2019)

In 2014, it was clear that after many years of creating photographic images, Ballen had a developed a need to transcend what people refer to as pure photography. He became increasingly involved in video, installations and collage and painting and other multimedia. From 2006 the co-leader of the South African rap group, Die Antwoord's Yolandi Visser, contacted Ballen proposing a collaboration. In 2011, he directed the music video for the song "I Fink U Freeky" by Die Antwoord which has been viewed 150 million times on YouTube. ''Roger Ballen - Die Antwoord: I Fink U Freeky'' (2013) was a book collaboration with Die Antwoord, with group's leaders,
Yolandi Yolandi is a given name. People with that name include: * Yolandi Visser (born 1984), female vocalist in the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord * Yolandi van der Westhuizen (1981–), international cricketer for South Africa * Yolandi Potgi ...
and
Ninja A or was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. The functions of a ninja included reconnaissance, espionage, infiltration, deception, ambush, bodyguarding and their fighting skills in martial arts, including ninjutsu.Kawakami, pp. 2 ...
, as the photographic subjects. After completing ''Asylum of the Birds'' in 2013, Roger Ballen began his last series of black and white negative based imagery in which Rats dominated every image.  The unpublished project, which was completed in 2017 once again integrated drawing, painting, sculpture through the camera and eye of the artist. The results reveal a world immersed in chaos, absurdity and dream like reality. In 2020, he will complete a photographic and video project of a person dressed as a cartoon rat in which this character is involved in activities that might be seen as politically and socially absurd. In 2015, Ballen created a conceptual installation artwork in Finland's Serlachius Museum in Mantta. He transformed a dilapidated house in the Finish forest into a complete sculptural entity that was installed in the museum's new pavilion.The work coincided with a new publication, ''The House Project'' (2015) with long-time collaborator, writer Didi Bozzini. It moved away from a historical exposition of Ballen's work in favour of a psychological one, evoking possible literary and philosophical references in his work. Ballen has subsequently built installations all over the world, for example in the Istanbul Museum of Art (2016), Galleria Massimo Minini 2016, Brescia, Italy; 2017, Les Rencontres Arles (2017), Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town (2017), City Passage, No Exit Revisited (2018) Wiesbaden; Museo de Fotografia, 2018, Fortaleza, Brazil. Ballen's collaboration with '' Comme des Garçons'' featured at Paris Fashion Week saw his artwork on the brand's Homme Plus A/W 2015 range, where his images were etched onto the back of white coats for their Fall 2015 collection. In ''No Joke'' (2013), Ballen and Rossouw collaborated with Asger Carlson to create photo-sculpted figures, swapped self-portraits, substituted and reassigned body parts, oddly occupied architecture, cut and collaged hand-drawn masks and graffiti, as well as spiders, foxes, angels, demons and dolls in an imaginary dream-like set on which an elusive narrative unfolds. In ''Unleashed'' (2017), Ballen and Rossouw worked together with artist and sculpture, Hans Lemmen to create images that integrate Lemmen's figurative drawings (that reference natural history, archaeology, paleontology, mythological proto-civilization) with Ballen's theatrical depictions of the subconscious. In 2018, Ballen released his first series of colour photographs after Leica gave him a colour camera with which to experiment with. A series of colour polaroids was first shown at a booth of Reflex Gallery at Unseen Photo Fair, and 150 of them published in a book by the gallery and van Sniderden, entitled ''Roger Ballen: Polaroids - Volume One'' (2017). In September 2019, Ballen opened his largest show yet at HalleSaint Pierre in Paris titled ''The World According to Roger Ballen'' in which he exhibited numerous installations, drawings, videos, and photographs


Roger the Rat (2015-2020)

Ballen created the ''Roger the Rat'' series in Johannesburg between 2015 and 2020. In this series, the artist documents a part-human, part-animal rat creature who lives an isolated life outside of mainstream society. The rodent protagonist of these black-and-white photos engages in devious behaviours that are both humorous and sinister; relinquishes morality to live a life “unconstrained by societal norms.” The rat dances and drinks with mannequin friends, participates in lewd or sexually perverse acts engages in acts of torture, beheading or dismemberment (kills catfish in a bath, ties and locks up mannequins in a narrow cupboard, feeds another rat to snake and holds a head on a butcher block). Roger the Rat’s set—his surroundings and companions—have distinctly “Ballenesque” elements such as bare walls, filthy bedding, mannequins, chains, chalk drawings and abundant rats. In evoking discomfort through transgressive and mischievous acts, these photographs are intended to disturb and unleash the deeper, repressed parts of the psyche. As Roger the Rat writes in the introduction to the book:
“Most people hate people such as me, as we challenge their illusion of stability and purpose. As I rat, I symbolize chaos and disorder. There is little hope for a better world until humanity comes to term with the unpleasant fact that repression and fear are the masters of their destiny.”
Some have even deemed Roger the Rat as an eponym of the artist; more specifically, of his unconscious. However, the artist has explained the symbolism of rats in general:
“The rat has always been thought of as something that carries disease -- something that’s dirty, and that should be avoided. In a way, it’s seen as an archetype of evil. But it is, ultimately, just a part of nature: it’s not good or bad, it’s just out there doing whatever it’s programmed by nature to do… The second thing is that rats are super intelligent. If you were to weigh a rat’s brain, in relationship to, an equal sized animal brain, the rat’s intelligence would be much greater…You find them in any climate or context -- in the Arctic, in the tropics, in garbage dumps, in the wild -- and they breed and they breed and they breed. It’s an animal that’s super adaptable, that exists all over the world, and yet, in the Western World at least, is seen as a sign of evil and chaos. It’s interesting how we project these value judgments onto them. Their intelligence is often perceived as malicious. That’s a sign of our repression. Western culture prefers things shiny, new, innovated. It likes to have an optimistic, repressed view of life. It clings to Holly- wood films because they always end in a positive way. The rat, for whatever historical reasons, has come to symbolise the diametric opposite to that. The rat symbolizes subconscious repression.”
In 2020, one week before the coronavirus lockdown in South Africa, Ballen completed a 25-minute film featuring Roger with the mime-actor, Daniel Buckland, portraying Roger the Rat. Directed by Justin Elgie with cinematography by Paul Gilpin, the film adds an extra dimension to the character of Roger by placing him in a medium with the capacity to reach a wider audience. Various sounds – including trains, road traffic and rats’ squeaks – pervade the hovel in which Roger lives. One experiences his love–hate relationships with the mannequins and other rats he invites into his dwelling.


Move to Colour (2017-)

At the end of 2016, Ballen contacted Leica to obtain a camera for a film he was to make on his Thames and Hudson publication, ''Roger Ballen: A Retrospective'', which was to be published shortly thereafter. Whilst making the film using the Leica SL (with 35-90mm) zoom lens, Ballen experimented with taking some still shots in colour. The palette remained muted and monochromatic: in the artist’s words, his photography had become “black-and-white in colour”. This shift also facilitated a more creative exploration of lighting and enhanced the ambiguity of the real and fictional, both of which contributed to a greater complexity of the photographs. Ballen writes: “The move to colour was unexpected, to say the least. It could be compared to an earthquake, when layers of rock that used to be side by side suddenly find themselves in some other place.”


Lockdown Drawings (2020)

Ballen began drawing on canvas during the first South African Covid lockdown of March 2020. This was the first time that he engaged in this kind of activity since 1973, when following his mother’s death, he painted for a period of five months. Ballen notes that the drawings in his photographs can be traced back to this early period of artistic exploration in his 20s. A few days before the lockdown, Ballen realised that the only creative activity he could pursue during this time, would be drawing. His wife, artist Lynda Ballen, helped him to acquire a 50-metre-long roll of canvas and Rembrandt colour pastels. Since construction of the Inside Out Centre for the Arts was halted due to the pandemic, Ballen set up an ad hoc painting studio in this used unfinished, empty building, and worked there for two months in isolation. During the first eight weeks of lockdown, he worked solely on canvas, and then began working on board, which enhanced the saturation of the pastel. Ballen’s thirty five drawings from this time, reflect the themes and imagery of the pandemic, as he writes:
"Ghostlike figures, predatory beasts, viruses and sickly figures reflected a world of fear, chaos and uncertainty. The most primitive form of life was on the verge of destroying the scientific and technological certainties on which modern consumer life is based. Inside the primeval parts of our brain, there exists an archetypal fear of the kind of disease that has the capacity to kill its host. The Covid-19 virus had triggered this fear; it had awakened it at the expense of all our other concerns. It might be generations before humans are able to come to terms with such deep-seated fears."


Inside Out Centre for the Arts

Ballen founded the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in 2018. He created the centre to exhibit, educate and promote art related to the African continent. It aims to provide a powerful multimedia experience, using photography, videos, installation, drawing and painting, and will open to the public in mid 2022. In 2018, a site became available in Forest Town, Johannesburg for the construction of the Inside Out Centre building. Ballen commissioned Joe Van Rooyen of JVR Architects to design a multifunctional structure. The design incorporates an office or administrative area, printing area, Ballen’s archive, as well as exhibition spaces for a range of artistic practices, including photography, installation, sculpture, drawing, painting and film. The property is situated on the major artery of Jan Smuts (48 Jan Smuts Ave) in Forest Town. It forms part of a trio of cultural centres, joining The Johannesburg Contemporary Arts Foundation and The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, which gives the suburban area a clear public character. Ballen’s photographs and other artworks take the viewer on a journey into the deeper, elusive recesses of the psyche. This process of internal, psychological discovery– in which repressed or concealed material is brought to the forefront of consciousness when looking at the artwork– is captured in the name “Inside Out Centre ''.This aesthetic ideology is also translated into all aspects of this landmark’s design. From the road, an undulating fence draws in the eyes of passersby. The edifice appears as a mysterious block; a curved ramp leads the visitor into a concealed entrance. Exterior and interior concrete surfaces are almost indistinguishable. What is inside and outside becomes ambiguous, or even blurred: the insides of the building are literally turned ‘out’. Within the walls, a dramatically cantilevered room (suspended over this sunken courtyard on the left), houses the main office and administrative functions. The main exhibition space is dominated by a suspended barrel hanging in the double-volume space. This heeds to the abstraction of the artist’s work. Further, the building appropriately draws inspiration from the Brutalist movement of the 1950s. In a similar vein to Ballen’s works, this architectural movement aimed to confront the viewer to the ‘raw’ by exposing sculptural elements or bare building materials. The strong geometry and béton brut (raw concrete) filter soft light into the space. These cast patterns of sun and shadow throughout the day evoke the camera’s aperture, which opens and closes to let in various degrees of light which affect the appearance of the photograph. It also illuminates the space with indirect light that protects the artworks from bleaching or destruction from harsh, direct light. Ballen was also influenced by simplicity, weightlessness and complex circulation of the Japanese architect Tadao Ando's The Tokyo Art Museum. The exterior of the building, stippled in Tyrolean plasterwork, harks back to the Arts and Crafts Movement and pays homage to many of the heritage houses established in the area. The building is set low, and the mass is broken down into ordered parts, to respect the current fabric of the area. Horizontal windows line is the walkway that bridges the entrance with the office area and frames significant scenes of the historic suburb of Parktown (such as the famous white spires of the Johannesburg South Africa Temple). On the other side, enlarged windows on the front of the building look onto a grand jacaranda tree; a pond that brims with bamboo, black water lilies that appear as iron sculptures and vegetation of Westcliff ridge. Alongside Parktown, this area was the home to the city’s colonial randlords and mining magnates as early as the 1890s.


Publications


Publications by Ballen

*''Boyhood.'' New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1979. . *''Dorps: Small Towns of South Africa.'' Cape Town: Hirt and Carter, 1986. Reprinted by Protea Boekhuis, 2011. *''Platteland.'' London: Quartet, 1994; New York: St. Martin's, 1996. *''Cette Afrique là.'' Photo Poche series. Paris: Nathan, 1997. *''Outland.'' London: Phaidon, 2001. **Expanded edition. Phaidon, 2015. *''Fact or Fiction.'' Paris: Kamel Mennour, 2003. . *''Shadow Chamber.'' London: Phaidon, 2005. *''Boarding House.'' London: Phaidon, 2009. *''Animal Abstraction.'' Exhibition catalogue Galerie Alex Daniels, Amsterdam: Reflex, 2011. *''Roger Ballen.'' Photo Poche series. Paris: Nathan, 2012. *''I Fink U Freeky.'' Random House Prestel, 2013. *''Asylum of the Birds.'' London:
Thames & Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...
, 2014. . With an introduction by Didi Bozzini. *''The House Project.'' Oodee, 2015. . Edition of 1000 copies. *''The Rome Ballen Times''. Rome: Punctum. Edition of 200 copies. *''Ballenesque: Roger Ballen, A Retrospective.'' London: Thames and Hudson, 2017. *''The World According to Roger Ballen.'' London, Thames and Hudson, 2020.


Publication paired with another

*''No Joke.'' London: Morel, 2016. With Asger Carlsen. . Edition of 1000 copies. * ''Unleashed'', Bielfeld: Kerber, 2017 with Hans Lemmen. Editor: Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge.


Collections

Ballen's work is held in the following permanent collections: *Galería la Aurora, Murcia, Spain *
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...
, New York: 1 print (as of February 2020) *
Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
, Amsterdam, NetherlandsStedelijk Museu
"Collection: Roger Ballen"
''Stedelijk Museum''. Retrieved 2016-01-26.


Awards

* Best Photographic Book of the Year,
PHotoEspaña PHotoEspaña, the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts of Madrid, is a photography forum that began in 1998. The Festival’s program presents work by Spanish and international image-makers. It runs an awards programme with sev ...
, Spain, 2001 * Photographer of the Year, Rencontres d'Arles, 2002 * Finalist, Citigroup Photography Prize (now
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is a prize awarded annually by the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and The Photographers' Gallery to a photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the photographic medium i ...
), UK, 2002 * Finalist,
Lucie Awards The Lucie Awards is an annual event honoring achievements in photography, founded in 2003 by Hossein Farmani. The Lucie Awards is an annual gala ceremony presented by the Lucie Foundation (a 501 (c)3 non-profit charitable organization), honoring ...
Curator/Exhibition of the Year: Roger Ballen: Photographs 1982 – 2009. Curated by Dr. Anthony Bannon for the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. * Best music video, ''I Fink U Freeky'', 20th Short Vila do Conde International Film Festival, Portugal, 2012 * Best Music Video, ''I Fink U Freeky'', Plus Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, Bydgoszcz, Poland * Honorary Doctor of Art and Design,
Kingston University , mottoeng = "Through Learning We Progress" , established = – gained University Status – Kingston Technical Institute , type = Public , endowment = £2.3 m (2015) , ...
, UK, 2018


References


External links

*
Newspaper article, The Age (Australian)Roger Ballen about his book Dorps
Clip from documentary film ''Selfportrait, Roger Ballen,'' 2002.
"The Shadow Side: An Interview with Roger Ballen"
at ''GUP Magazine'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Ballen, Roger Photographers from New York City Living people 1950 births American expatriates in South Africa The New Yorker people South African artists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Colorado School of Mines alumni Jewish American artists 21st-century American Jews