Roger Ballen: Difference between revisions

After the death of his mother Adrienne in 1973, he, like many of the counter-culture, developed existential longing in responseresponsive aversion to the materialism of Western society and his suburban upbringing. He spent the subsequent five months at the Art Students of League of New York. Here, he painted [[Outsider art|art brut]], [[Primitivism|primitivist]], paintings, that according to his teacher, "belonged in the Stone Age".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Ballen|first=Roger|title=Ballenesque, Roger Ballen: A Retrospective|publisher=Thames and Hudson|year=2017|isbn=978-0500519691|location=London|pages=2010}}</ref> 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;, and then 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 [[Color field|colour field]] painting movement) and developed an interest in observing the life of young boys. He kept Kodak Tri-X or Plus X film in 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ballenesque|last=Ballen|first=Roger|publisher=Thames and Hudson|year=2017|isbn=978-0500519691|location=London|pages=15–25}}</ref>

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, with 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rogerballen.com/articles/ballenesque-an-insight-into-the-life-and-work-of-roger-ballen/|title=Ballenesque: An insight into the life and work of Roger Ballen|last=Pete|first=Littlewood|date=2018|website=Roger Ballen Photographer}}</ref> Disillusioned by the idea of commercial photography, Ballen enrolled at the [[Colorado School of Mines]] in 1978, where he received in PhD in Mineralmineral Economicseconomics 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 were once privileged fromduring Apartheid, but who were now isolated and economically deprived.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ballenesque|last=Ballen|first=Roger|publisher=Thames and Hudson|year=2017|isbn=978-0500519691|location=London|pages=75}}</ref> 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 Honoraryhonorary Doctoratedoctorate in Artart and Designdesign from Kingston University. In 2008, the Roger Ballen Foundation was founded to promote the advancement of education ofin photography in Africa. From April 2020, it will be housed in the Roger Ballen Centre for Photographic Art, Forest Town, Johannesburg.

Ballen's early [[street photography]] and the psychological portraiture of ''Boyhood, Dorps'' and ''Platteland'' was influenced by the work of [[Henri Cartier-Bresson|Cartier Bresson]], [[Walker Evans]], [[Diane Arbus]] and [[Elliott Erwitt|Elliot Erwitt]]. The distinctive "Ballenesque" style of his documentary fiction (from 2000 onward), has been said to reference the artistic genres of [[Theatre of the Absurd|absurdist theatre]], [[outsider art]], [[Outsider art|art brut]], [[Naïve art|naivism]], photographic [[surrealism]] 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, [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]], [[Carl Jung|Jung]] and [[Antonin Artaud|Artaud.]]

In ''Dorps: Small Towns of South Africa'' (1986), Ballen documented the small towns and villages in unmodernised "hinterlands" of [[Apartheid]] 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.<ref>{{Cite book|last=van Wyk|first=Gary|title=Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=9781135205362|location=London|pages=94}}</ref> 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).

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 bookBook of the yearYear at [[PHotoEspaña|PhotoEspaña]] 2001, Madrid, Spain and Ballen the Photographer of the Year at [[Rencontres d'Arles|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.

''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 changechance of being noticed." Young writes that "[i]n 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."<ref name=":0" />

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".<ref>{{Cite journal|journal=British Journal of Photography|title=Roger Ballen lifts lid on Asylum of the Birds|date=2014}}</ref> 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: <blockquote>"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...[t]he 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."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://time.com/34274/the-dark-side-roger-ballens-asylum/|title=The Dark Side: Roger Ballen's 'Asylum'|last=Campbell|first=Erica Fahr|date=2012|website=Time Magazine}}</ref></blockquote>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.<ref name=":2" /> 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.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|url=https://www.rogerballen.com/the-theatre-of-apparitions/|title=The Theatre of Apparitions|last=Ballen|first=Roger|date=2020|website=Roger Ballen Photography}}</ref> 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 ofexperimentation with Otherother Mediamedia (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|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&nbsp;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 Visser|Yolandi]] and [[Watkin Tudor Jones|Ninja]], 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 likedreamlike 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.

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

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:<blockquote>“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 termterms with the unpleasant fact that repression and fear are the masters of their destiny.” <ref>{{Cite book|last=Ballen|first=Roger|title=Roger the Rat|publisher=Hatje Cantz|year=2020|isbn=9783775748193|location=Berlin|pages=7|language=English}}</ref></blockquote>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:<blockquote>“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- woodHollywood 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.”<ref>{{Cite web|last=Ballen|first=Roger|date=28 August 2021|title=ROGER BALLEN - ROGER THE RAT|url=https://www.reeditionmagazine.com/photography/roger-ballen-new-book-roger-the-rat|access-date=15 January 2022|website=Re-Edition Magazine}}</ref> </blockquote>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. <ref>{{Cite web|last=Ballen|first=Roger|title=Roger the Rat Film Trailer|website=[[YouTube]] |date=23 October 2020 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPLJ_lOMYmU}}</ref>

=== Move to Colourcolour (2017-) ===

=== Lockdown Drawingsdrawings (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:<blockquote>"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."<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Ballen|first=Roger|title=Ballenesque, Roger Ballen: A Retrospective|publisher=Thames and Hudson|year=2022|isbn=9780500296554|pages=326|language=English}}</ref>[[File:Roger Ballen Lockdown Drawings.jpg|thumb|One of Roger Ballen's Lockdown Drawings in Progress (March 2020)]]

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 <nowiki>''</nowiki>.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’. <ref name=":4">{{Cite web|last=Wood|first=Graham|date=12 July 2021|title=ROGER BALLEN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC ART|url=https://visi.co.za/roger-ballen-centre-for-photographic-art/|access-date=30 December 2020|website=Visi}}</ref>

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.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|last=Wood|first=Graham|date=12 July 2021|title=ROGER BALLEN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC ART|url=https://visi.co.za/roger-ballen-centre-for-photographic-art/|access-date=30 December 2020|website=Visi}}</ref>

Further, the building appropriately draws inspiration from the [[Brutalist architecture|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.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|last=Wood|first=Graham|date=12 July 2021|title=ROGER BALLEN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC ART|url=https://visi.co.za/roger-ballen-centre-for-photographic-art/|access-date=30 December 2020|website=Visi}}</ref>. 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|Tadao Ando's]] The Tokyo Art Museum.

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