When the American photographer Roger Ballen named his 2018 retrospective book “Ballenesque,” the title immediately conjured his distinctive aesthetic. His best-known images are unsettling portraits of people on the fringes of society, taken in interior spaces, the walls of which Ballen has covered with primitive drawings. But long before he made his reputation in the […]
The World According to Roger Ballen at Halle Saint Pierre
Published by Thames and Hudson to coincide with Roger Ballen’s first major French exhibition at the Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, France. The exhibition will take place from 7 September 2019 to 31 July 2010. “Roger Ballen reigns over the black-and-white world of the human psyche. Disturbing, provocative and enigmatic, the work of this American-born South […]
The Everlasting Enigma of Roger Ballen – Blind: Photography at First Sight
To encounter the South Africa-based American photographer Roger Ballen means to experience the uncanny nature of his photographs. The artist enjoys showing them to you in an easygoing, straightforward manner over lunch, which he barely touches, choosing instead to reveal some of the secrets of his art… Discussion, 2018 Roger Ballen has lively, piercing […]
Captured: A Walk Through Roger Ballen’s Career – Lure Magazine
TAKE A VISUAL JOURNEY THROUGH ROGER BALLEN’S BIOGRAPHY AND EVOLUTION OF STYLE. A boy from Westchester, New York, turned wandering geologist, turned photographer of social outcasts — Roger Ballen’s biography is as fantastic as the portraits he’s captured over the past five decades. Deathbed, 2010 In 1968, Ballen’s parents gifted their recent high-school grad […]
Roger Ballen x Die Antwoord
Ballenesque, Roger Ballen: A Retrospective (GAGPROJECTS/Adelaide Festival)
Alison Stieven-Taylor reviews ‘Ballenesque, Roger Ballen: A Retrospective’ (GAGProjects/Adelaide Festival) for Australian Book Review.
Six photographers who helped us visualise the human psyche
The Dark Web
Rats, rabbits and snakes surround skinny, angular, shirtless dancers, all rendered in black and white in a dark room whose filthy walls are daubed in drawings of aroused part-human, part-animal figures.
Roger Ballen: Beyond the Mind
Exploring the dark, bizarre and dreamlike world of photographer Roger Ballen. In an exclusive interview with one of the most original and influential photographic artists of the 20th century, we talk fantasy and the magical alchemy of the human imagination.