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Roger Ballens’ s photography is the stuff of psychoanalysis. In the 35 years he has been publishing his images, Ballen has sought to visualise dark, repressed corners of the human psyche, his unsettling imagery confronting us with our own ugliness. Over the course of his career Ballen has developed one of the most distinctive visual styles in the photographic field. Though his early work could easily be that of a documentary photographer, his focus has become increasingly conceptual and his recent works are very much an exercise in miss-en-scene. Ballen’ s work has been controversially received; though he insists his imagery is an exploration of the psychological and not the sociological. Looking to Ballen’ s back catalogue, this article assesses the internal focus that fostered his creativity.
Born in New York in 1950, Ballen grew up surrounded
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by artistic imagery. His mother worked at Magnum Photography and went on to open one of the first photo galleries in New York. Ballen’ s own work began in earnest when he moved to South Africa. This relatively isolated location is seemingly important in terms of his personal development as a photographer. With no institutional‘ art scene’ Ballen’ s focus was largely internalised, he explains,“ I’ ve just been looking at my own work, building my own vision. In Paris, New York or London you feel like you’ re in a washing machine- you get lost.” The photographer works solely in black and white and is adamantly loyal to an analogue tradition. Working with film is a process of sentimental value to Ballen; perhaps his introverted approach has also left him detached from
technological advancements. Ballen’ s projects begin with a central question, and he works for a number
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of years in finding an answer.‘ Outland’ from 2001, for example, began with the binaries of chaos and order. Ballen was interested by which state dominates the human condition.
Ballen’ s photographs are a journey into the internal, an attempt to visualise something undefined in the self. The best work, he argues, is immediate and provocative, confronting its viewer and demanding a response. Ballen’ s imagery is undeniably captivating. The photographer insists our fascination as an audience, stems from being confronted by the self. Speaking in April last year at Rudolf Steiner House in London, Ballen discussed one of his most iconic images from his 1994‘ Platteland’ series- Dresie and Casie, Twins, Western Transval, 1993- attributing the audiences reaction to the photograph to an affiliation with its subject,“ they’ re your cousins. You’ re related to them. You
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are seeing a picture of your insides.”
‘ Platteland’ was a controversial project; Ballen was criticised for exploiting the poverty of his subjects. Though he argues such a suggestion is a misunderstanding of his images. To his mind, the work is an expression of marginalisationthe human condition on the fringes of society. An abstruse facet to the human psyche is a consistent theme in Ballen’ s work, and he contends that,“ the people that felt most offended by( the Platteland) images were … those who … knew themselves the least. In other words, they were scared of their own shadows.” Despite the media spectacle of‘ Plattelands,’ Ballen’ s own account credits the 1986‘ Dorps’ as his principal work. It is the project in which he composed the features now symptomatic of his photography. He established reoccurring motifs such as wire and texture,
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