Roger Ballen depict an abstracted imaginary space that is inhabited by both animals and people. Mostly within grey, barren cell-like structures, nightmarish scenarios, which are unspecific in their narrative, are enacted. The oppressive intensity of this environment is created by the metaphorical or symbolic interplay of the spaces, the figures and animals, and the furniture and other paraphernalia that exist within – and in fact help create – this world.

For Ballen, inspired by the American 'Field painters' of the 1960s and early 1970s, everything that resides within the visual field is significant. Accordingly, Ballen is not a photographer for whom standard divisions like subject and object, motif and background, make any sense: the drizzle and lilt of a wire, the shuffle of a shoe, the smear of sand on a wall are as important to the reading of the work, to its distinct power, as gestures more humanly communicative like a smile or grimace. This expanded pictorial focus produces a kind of animism where objects that might be mute in another photographer’s work speak in a chaotic and compelling tongue, making even the most ostensibly naturalistic image more surreal than real.

——the Interview in 2008“Roger Ballen: Uncanny Animals”by Ann Biroleau and Robert Cook

ROGER BALLEN: BOARDING HOUSE

“It is difficult to explain this place except that I think it exists in some way or another in most people’s mind.” –Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen’s photographs are like images from a waking dream: compelling and thought-provoking, with layers of rich details, flashes of dark humor, and an altered sense of place. Blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and art, his work is both a powerful social statement and a complex psychological study.

Phaidon Press is pleased to announce the publication of BOARDING HOUSE  by Roger Ballen, a new collection of photographs by the South African photographer. Showcasing over 70 black and white images, mostly unpublished, this is Ballen’s most formally sophisticated work to date. The tableaux have a greater emphasis on drawn and sculptural elements, and the sense of collaboration between the artist and his subjects is increasingly relevant. An introductory essay by photography curator David Travis addresses the work in an accessible way, looking at these images in the wider context of Ballen's career.

BOARDING HOUSE is a space of transient residence, of comings and goings, of people sheltered in a place they are using for their immediate survival. Basic and fundamental, the structure is furnished with objects necessary for an elementary existence, decorated with evocative drawings, and littered throughout with animals. Remnants function there as physical symbols of events that have occurred in the space; broken pieces of a functional reality exist as the leftovers of scenarios that have been played out there. The altered sense of place of this temporary abode creates a sense of alienation, which acts as a jumping off point for the imagination to run wild.

Similar to his critically acclaimed work Outland and Shadow Chamber (Phaidon Press 2001, 2005), the BOARDING HOUSE is a journey of discovery in which we leave our ordinary selves behind and confront a primitive part of the human condition and its psyche. Whether the place is real or imaginary is both indecipherable and irrelevant. It is a place where Ballen’s subconscious and the viewer’s inhibitions can occupy its own universe.

 
Author Details:
David Travis was chair of the department of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago until retiring from the post in 2008, having worked at the institute for 36 years. Since starting out as an assistant curator in 1972, he curated more than 150 photography exhibitions at the institute and also guest curated exhibitions at other American museums, including the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A collection of his lectures and essays, At the Edge of Light: Thoughts on Photographers and Photography, on Talent and Genius, was published in 2003.

 
Publication Information:
Title Roger Ballen: Boarding House
Author: David Travis
ISBN: 978 0 7148 4952 2
Price: rmb350
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: April 2009
Extent: 128 pages
Illustrations: 74 black and white illustrations