Roger Ballen
Writing
Biography
Roger Ballen is one of the most important photographers of his generation. He was born in New York in 1950 but for over 30 years he has lived and worked in South Africa. His work as a geologist took him out into the veldt and led him to take up his camera and explore the hidden world of small South African towns. At first he explored the empty streets in the glare of the midday sun but, once he had made the step of knocking on people's doors, he discovered a world inside these houses which was to have a profound effect on his work. These interiors with their distinctive collections of objects and the occupants within these closed worlds took his unique vision on a path from social critique to the creation of metaphors for the inner mind. After 1994 he no longer looked to the countryside for his subject matter finding it closer to home in Johannesburg.
Known For
South African producer / director JON DAY spent the last 5 years making a documentary about the mysterious rap-rave group, DIE ANTWOORD. Art directed by surrealist photographer, ROGER BALLEN. Narrated by NINJA & ¥O-LANDI'S daughter, 16 JONES.
ZEF - The Story of Die Antwoord
Little Tommy unable to sleep and not comforted by his parents over that matter is invited by mysterious Rat Girl to go down the rat hole.
Tommy Can't Sleep
An American who has lived in South Africa for the past thirty years, Roger Ballen began his career as a geologist. He is now one of the most important and influential photographic artists of the 21st century.
Roger Ballen - A Good Picture Comes from Nowhere
To mark the publication of his much-awaited new monograph, Asylum of the Birds, photographer Roger Ballen, with director Ben Crossman, has produced this psychologically powerful, unforgettable film that follows Roger into a world synonymous with his photographs, as never before seen on film.
Roger Ballen's Asylum of the Birds
The dusty cells underneath the former insane asylum in Rozelle's Callan Park have been silent and empty for decades, a relic of a brutal and less-enlightened era. But it doesn't require much imagination to feel and hear the pain and anguish those walls once witnessed. And now those tiny, terrifying spaces are once again populated. Thankfully, not by the ranks of the rejected and stigmatised but by a series of unsettling tableaux created by US photographer Roger Ballen.
Theatre of the Mind
The film explores a theme that runs through most, if not all of the artist's work, people who are marginalised by society. This is explored through the lens of the unmistakable aesthetic of the Ballenesque and for a brief moment in time we are submerged in the surreal subterranean world of Roger the Rat, which may seem alien and cold to some while perhaps others know it only too well.