Roger Ballen photo exhibition: The dark side of white

Roger Ballen

His subjects are mentally unstable, disabled or violent, sitting in their derelict houses, and their settings are heavily spooky. Animals, sculptures, dolls, wires and primitive paintings are the protagonists in his black-and-white frames. “I have been photographing since the ’60s and my subject has gone through many transformations. When I was in India in the early ’70s, I was working on a book called Boyhood, which is about children and the way I was trying to find my own childhood through my travels. The portraits are mainly a result of my work from 1986 to 2003,”said Ballen, who also gave a talk at the Delhi Photo Festival earlier this week. “After that, there are few portraits in my photographs. There are a lot of animals and drawings, and the pictures have become increasingly abstract,” he added.

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Drawing upon his three books — Outland (2000), Shadow Chamber (2005) and the most recent, Asylum of the Birds (2014) — the exhibition includes the iconic Brian and Pet Pig, taken in 1998, where one cannot help but notice the unusual affection of a man called Brian, for his pet — a large pig. Ballen spoke about the tragic ending to Brian’s tale. “The local council prohibited him from living with his pig, and sent it to the slaughterhouse. In their community, they are not allowed to have any other pets except for dogs and cats,” he said.

Ballen, who now lives in Johannesburg, said, “A picture for me is a psychological journey.”

As he shed light on many of his portraits, he added, “I really do not have a motive. I only try to make pictures that are intense and strong. My art has a very piercing gaze and that is a part of my aesthetic.” Man Drawing Chalk Faces (2000) focuses on Stefanus, a man with a strong liking for drawing, who carries a chalk with him wherever he goes. Here, a half-clothed Stefanus can be seen drawing multiple faces on a wall.

Meanwhile, a video features few of the protagonists of Ballen’s Outland series, including one of his favourite subjects, Stan, a man who calls rats “his babies”. “He would keep searching and collecting rats during the day and release all of them at night,” Ballen said.

Also on display is his iconic series “Asylum of the Birds”, shot in a building in Johannesburg where the owner refused to cage the birds and let them fly in the house, residing peacefully with other people and animals, depicting the photographer’s move into a more abstract form.

Ballen’s controversial works have been published in many book volumes and have been exhibited internationally.

Describing his photographs as a gateway into the inner consciousness, Ballen, who now lives in Johannesburg, said, “A picture for me is a psychological journey. My photographs have a bit of a jolt. I would not be impressed by looking at a picture that has no influence on me. That is the purpose of art, to help people reflect on reality.” Many of Ballen’s protagonists include immigrants, fugitives, and the homeless.

Ballen’s controversial works have been published in many book volumes and have been exhibited internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. For Ballen, the best way to make any political change is through photography, particularly his kind. Photographs of the struggling white rural poor in Dorps (1986) and Platteland (1994) provoked a cyclone of opposition and controversies for the 65-year-old. It almost earned him the tag of a whistleblower. “It showed a group of white people who were not coping very well and broke the illusion that the whites were all powerful. Whites were feeling were insecure at that time because the blacks were taking over the government in 1994-1995. I was threatened several times,” he said.

The exhibition is on display at Photoink gallery till January 9. For more info, log on to http://www.photoink.net