and limbs arranged to give off both a sense
of disembodiment and tangibility, along with
birds, wall drawings, protruding wires, and
emaciated figures, but the explication of his
work sounds messier than it looks. Beyond
the Jungian undertones of the shadowed self,
the compositional components of Ballen’s
work are striking in their clarity. Some may
call it organized madness, a reflection of the
transferable nature of inner chaos. One of the
most impressive things about Ballen’s photographs is that each one captures a glimmer, a
millisecond of reality, in the most ironically
well-assembled manner. Each piece is rich in
its fullness and so that viewers can diagram
his work from over the years, which is why
the organization of the exhibition functions
well for both those familiar with Ballen and
those exposed to his photographs for the first
time.
If you are the latter party, you may wonder
about the ethics behind the work. Is he exploitative of people who may be physically
and/or mentally disabled? Is it acceptable
to capitalize on this otherness, this ambiguity, derangement and isolation shaped into
oddly slapstick and absurdist forms? Ballen
emphasizes that he isn’t ridiculing or manipulating the people he’s photographing, but
below: Unwind (Asylum of the Birds series)
that doesn’t stop us from considering the relationship between people and props within
his work, or the subject/object dichotom