Roger Ballen: From Innocent Boyhood, via Dorps, all the way to Die Antwoord

This is not an academic article. It is an overview of Ballen’s work, put together by Izak de Vries. Most of the commentary comes from Ballen’s own website.

By providing an extremely brief flip-through, it may provide the press with questions – and Dr Ballen loves to provide an Antwoord during press interviews. Dr
Ballen is a very well-spoken person who enjoys being put on the spot.

Boyhood
Chelsea House Publishers, New York - London, 1979

Innocence… and yet, the seeds have been planted (Izak’s words)
 Dorps, Small Towns of South Africa
Published by Hirt and Carter, Cape Town, 1986.

Reprinted by Protea Boekhuis, January 2011.

The vision is pure. It is direct. It does not rely upon photographic processing tricks. We can only marvel that the most commonplace subject matter becomes poetic, and
that the fragment becomes an artistic unit. Perhaps no more intimate portrait exists of these towns. – From Ballen’s website.
 Platteland, Images from Rural South Africa
William Waterman Publications, 1994.

Quartet Books, London, 1994.

St. Martin's Press, New York, 1996.

Ballen has photographed his subjects on their own terms, in the intimacy of their homes, with friends and family, and even their pets. The images, though devoid of excess,
stripped to their essence, are deceptively simple. – From Ballen’s website
 Outland
Phaidon Press, London, 2001.

Through the late 1990s and into 2000, Ballen's work has progressed again. Continuing to portray whites on the fringe of South African society, his subjects begin to act.
Where previously his pictures, however troubling, fell firmly into the category of documentary photography, his new work moves into the realms of fiction. Ballen's
characters act out dark and discomfiting tableaux, providing images which are exciting and disturbing in equal measure. One is forced to wonder, whether they are
exploited victims, colluding directly in their own ridicule, or newly empowered and active participants within the drama of their representation. – From Ballen’s website
 Shadow Chamber
Phaidon Press, London, 2005.

Ballen focuses on the interactions between the people, animals and objects that inhabit mysterious rooms - the shadow chamber. The rooms are unsettling and strange:
their walls are covered with scribbled drawings, stains and dangling wires, the floors are strewn with bizarre props and artefacts. Dogs, rabbits and kittens wander into the
frame or are stuffed into unlikely containers. Figures hide away in boxes, crouch behind overstuffed sofas and squat with their shirts pulled over their heads. The humans
and animals in Ballen's photographs appear isolated, estranged and lost, yet strangely empowered at the same time. – From Ballen’s website
 Boarding House
Phaidon Press, London, 2009.

"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

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. – From
Ballen’s website.
$creen grab$ from: Wat Pomp, by Die Antwoord, Directed by Roger Ballen

Yolandi Vi$$er and Ninja

Left: Vi$$er and Ninja, Right: DJ HighTech