Since the late 1990s, Roger Ballen's work has moved away from the category of documentary photography into the realms of fiction. Though he continued to portray people on the fringes of South African society, his subjects began to act out dark and discomfiting tableaux, providing images that are exciting and disturbing but also contain flashes of dark humour. Ballen's most recent images are painterly and sculptural in ways not immediately associated with photography. There is no digital imaging involved: everything shown happened in front of the camera. The images are completely honest, and yet they are also fabricated. In Shadow Chamber, Ballen focuses on the interactions between the people, animals and objects that inhabit his unique image space. The rooms he photographs are actual places that we know exist, but they are unsettling and strange, logical but utterly impossible: their walls are covered with scribbled drawings, stains and dangling wires, the floors are strewn with bizarre props and artefacts. Dogs, rabbits and kittens wander into the frame or are stuffed into unlikely containers. In one picture, a boy holds up a paper bag with a drawing of a bird on its side and a dead chicken hanging from the bag's bottom. Figures hide away in boxes, crouch behind overstuffed sofas and squat with their shirts pulled over their heads. The humans and animals in Ballen's photographs appear isolated, estranged and lost, yet strangely empowered at the same time. The resulting images are allegories of lived experiences as well as surreal takes on human destiny. As Robert A Sobieszek writes in his introduction to Shadow Chamber: '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.' In 2002, Ballen was named Photographer of the Year by Rencontres d'Arles. His work is included in many important private and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Johannesburg Art Museum, South Africa; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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'The images are compelling, with the repeated symbolism playing out recurring themes that we are only partly allowed access to...These are not easy viewing pictures, they're uncomfortable and dark and I can't say why I like them, but I do. And I'm not alone.' (Elizabeth Roberts, B&W)
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About the Author
Robert A. Sobieszek is Curator of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before moving to Los Angeles in 1990, he served in various curatorial positions and as Director of Photographic Collections at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. He has organized over 50 exhibitions and authored 10 books, including LACMA's Robert Smithson: Photo Works and The Camera I: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection. Author's residence: Los Angeles, USA Born in New York City, Roger Ballen has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa for almost 30 years. The son of a picture editor at Magnum, he worked as a geologist and mining consultant before starting his own photographic career by documenting the small villages of rural South Africa and their isolated inhabitants. His images are both powerful social statements and disturbing psychological studies. Ballen's previous book Outland (Phaidon, 2001) is of the most extraordinary photographic documents of the late twentieth century. Author's residence: Johannesburg, South Africa
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Roger Ballen: "Shadow Chamber"
Roger Ballen's Shadow Chamber, represents psychological studies of mans conscious and unconscious interactions with existence. Through construction of ambiguous spaces and still-life, Ballen composes allegories of the human experience.
Juxtaposing human amongst animals, and found objects, Ballen forces a dialogue between their essences. Often isolated within a fabricated space, the figures and objects appear dysfunctional, documenting a lack of consciousness and purpose.
The photographs have qualities of painting, performance, and sculpture, assisting in the surreal aesthetic and content of the work. Similar to painter Francis Bacon, Ballen confines the arrangements of his figures within small spaces. The walls, decomposing, covered in stains and scribbles, echo human emotional confusion. It is uncertain as to what is taking place within the chambers or their exact location, further causing a sense of disorientation.
"Inmate", 2003, is composed of a man on his back, smoking a cigarette, eyes wide, gazing upwards. A vine coils down a wall behind him as a mouse scurries past. A cord, resembling a telephone extension hangs from a nail above the mans head. As if everything outside of the frame, the chamber, or the natural world is erased, Ballen creates a world of his own within each image. Unifying human and animal within a limited space, the man, his cigarette, and the telephone cord are juxtaposed to the mouse and vine, underlining a comparison between the natural and manmade. While strategically building environments that encourage questions of the positioning of the subjects within each room, Ballen's objects and spaces don't always make sense, forever asking the question of what it means to be.
Roger Ballen's Shadow Chamber, represents psychological studies of mans conscious and unconscious interactions with existence. Through construction of ambiguous spaces and still-life, Ballen composes allegories of the human experience.
Juxtaposing human amongst animals, and found objects, Ballen forces a dialogue between their essences. Often isolated within a fabricated space, the figures and objects appear dysfunctional, documenting a lack of consciousness and purpose.
The photographs have qualities of painting, performance, and sculpture, assisting in the surreal aesthetic and content of the work. Similar to painter Francis Bacon, Ballen confines the arrangements of his figures within small spaces. The walls, decomposing, covered in stains and scribbles, echo human emotional confusion. It is uncertain as to what is taking place within the chambers or their exact location, further causing a sense of disorientation.
"Inmate", 2003, is composed of a man on his back, smoking a cigarette, eyes wide, gazing upwards. A vine coils down a wall behind him as a mouse scurries past. A cord, resembling a telephone extension hangs from a nail above the mans head. As if everything outside of the frame, the chamber, or the natural world is erased, Ballen creates a world of his own within each image. Unifying human and animal within a limited space, the man, his cigarette, and the telephone cord are juxtaposed to the mouse and vine, underlining a comparison between the natural and manmade. While strategically building environments that encourage questions of the positioning of the subjects within each room, Ballen's objects and spaces don't always make sense, forever asking the question of what it means to be.
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