Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen
Born (1950-04-11) April 11, 1950 (age 74)
NationalityAmerican/South African
Alma mater
OccupationPhotographer/artist
Notable work
  • Dorps: Small Towns of South Africa
  • Platteland
  • Outland
  • Shadow Chamber
  • Boarding House
  • Asylum of the Birds
  • The Theatre of Apparitions
  • Ballenesque, Roger Ballen: A Retrospective
  • The World According to Roger Ballen
SpouseLynda Ballen
Children
  • Amanda Ballen
  • Paul Ballen
Websitewww.rogerballen.com

Roger Ballen (born April 11, 1950) is an American artist living in Johannesburg, South Africa,[1] 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.[2] 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.[3]

  1. ^ O'Hagan, Sean (5 April 2015). "Photographer Roger Ballen: 'I can live with myself'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 February 2020 – via www.theguardian.com.
  2. ^ Peter, Weiermair (2001). "Portraits as Still Lives: The Photographs of Roger Ballen". Absolute Arts.
  3. ^ Manatakis, Lex (March 2019). "Six photographers who helped us visualise the human psyche". Daze Digital.