This post is  a continuation of yesterday’s post.

What relationship does Ballen have towards the creation of his work? How much is allowed to go unexplained for the sake of art? In his talk he said that he was many things to his subjects, to some a friend, to others a preacher, that he felt he had done his best to help them when he could. It remains that he is aestheticising their condition of living which itself is both a direct and indirect result of the society they live in. Unfortunately, the aestheticisation of social phenomena has led to rather unpleasant results. We need only to think of Benjamin and his idea that it was the aestheticisation of politics lead to Fascism. It is this mystifying capacity of pure aesthetics that lends Ballen’s work an uncomfortable ambiguity. He has erased the traces of his intervention, his direct flash and rigorous composition repeat themselves so as to appear normal. Yet this vision is far from normal, its message much deeper than an appreciation of formal relations.

Blind Woman (1916)

Ed Winkleman wrote an interesting article on the binary opposition between formalism and conceptual art and the blurred boundaries between the two that seems to characterise contemporary art. I would situate Ballen’s work right in the middle of this cusp. He is obviously informed by a very broad history of American formalist photography, from Weston to Evans passing through Strand – whose Blind Woman (1916) could easily pass for an early Ballen piece. What is problematic about this inheritance is of course its well-known deflection of the social in favour of a retreat into the merely visual qualities of the photograph. For anyone remotely interested in the critical capacity of art, this all becomes slightly tiring.

But let’s complicate this reasoning for argument’s sake. Could this openly uncritical presentation of the world be a highly crafted conceptual statement about our desire to demand explanations from difficult images?  Could Ballen in fact be prying precisely on that particular liberal consciousness that objects to images of pain and sufferance while wanting at the same time an explanation of how this suffering is possible?

I asked Ballen what his relationship was to suffering, and in particular to mental suffering – as his subjects seem to be afflicted by all sorts of psychological problems – and he chimed that he didn’t really know what suffering was. If he hasn’t learned what suffering is in the places he has been documenting for the last twenty years, then I fear for anyone who does find the true meaning of suffering. Again this strategy of deflection seems to put me at odds with his work. He is so close to ripping apart the comfortable middle-class calm that seems to have settled over contemporary art, yet never really goes in for the jugular. He says his images are more about gut feelings than mental thoughts, and this energy could easily be harnessed to destabilise the complacency that seems to have run amok in the art world, even when all the conditions seem to be right for a radical re-evaluation of the sustainability of the status quo.

Cut Loose (2005)

Yet he never quite gets there. His latest book, Boarding House is no different. It seems almost a retreat into details, the conspicuous absence of tortured bodies leaves the work rather empty in comparison to Shadow Chamber.  The prevailing sensation is that this destitute periphery will remain to be nothing more than a spectre of aesthetic spectacle, ever more incomprehensible as is it is exponentially beautiful. Perhaps my reaction to his work is so strong because I see such potential in it, and the delusion of watching it dissipate into the vapid mainstream art discourse is what keeps me coming back to it.

I want to start with a discussion of Roger Ballen that will take a few posts to flesh out.

“…the work of Roger Ballen is a form of radical, disquieting subjectivism, a psychology of the world itself that represents the inside of politics, the inside of ideology, the inside of ourselves. ” (Cook)

So opens Roger Ballen’s website.  I saw him speak at this year’s Paris Photo with great expectations, partly arising from the reputation he had garnered.  I have to say that I was rather underwhelmed, finding him grossly inarticulate, derivative and demeaning almost to the point of ridiculing his own work.  Perhaps I went into the talk with the wrong mindset,  I probably should have expected that the visceral quality of his images would be coming from an equally visceral man. I was not, however, prepared for the utter lack of responsibility that Ballen seemed to take over the creation of his imaes.

In a nutshell, Ballen takes fantastically composed images of the deprived and disenfranchised underbelly of rural South Africa.  This is something that needs to be seen, I believe.  I also believe that there is more to this world than the formal relations that Ballen ellicits.  Inevitably, any discussion of his work will concentrate on the conditions of its production. Questions of how these images are made, who these people are and how much Ballen interacts with them become fairly standard. We return more or less to the Diane Arbus paradox – what is the photographer’s relationships to these subjects and why are they photographing them. This paradox, for anyone interested in the photographs and not the photographer, become stale fairly quickly. It’s the work we’re seeing, not the artist.

So what is the case for subjectivity in Ballen’s work, how is he showing us the inside of things?

I don’t think he has shown us the inside of anything; he has succeeded in gleening the surface of things but he is far from penetrating them in any meaningfully political or ideological way, as the introduction to his work seems to be arguing. So what is he doing then? Is he expiating our desire to see the brutally bestial condition of man? Is he continuing the comforting reappropriation and neutralisation of the primitive that Dubuffet gave us in painting?

Ballen’s books seem to both threaten and reassure at the same time. The disquieting allure felt moving from image to image, not knowing what aesthetically perfect catastrophe awaits us on the next page is assauged by the fact that we can always close the cover and escape. This pleasure cofirms a sort of mastery over the inexplicable. The gruesome depravation behind the ink of those photographs is neutralised by our own ability to look at it, to marvel at its sheen while our mind revolts it.

More in Part II

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As you know, the Lucie Award–nominated international photo magazine GUP (Guide to Unique Photography) centers each of its bimonthly issues on a single topic, such as “The Black Issue,” with portfolios by Pieter Hugo, Phyllis Galembo, Paul D’Amato, and Roger Ballen, among others; “Graduates,” featuring Annick Ligtermoet, Sofie Van Dam, and Audrey Corregan; and “What We Like,” which includes a photo of Snoop Dogg smoking something that he likes.

The last issue of GUP was dubbed “Young at Heart,” and the magazine invited Lauren Greenfield to offer her take on the concept. “…She approached the theme in a way that was new to us,” the editors write in the introduction to Lauren’s 12-page GUP portfolio. “Young people under the illusion that they are adults but in their hearts are still children. Internally, they are innocent, naïve, uninhibited. Externally, they look older, polished, self-conscious. The influence of modern consumption culture on the mass media has resulted in the children being unable to connect behaviour with age. An ironic look into young hearts.”

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The opener for Lauren's GUP portfolio.

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The “Young at Heart” issue also features portfolios by Natascha Libbert, Robbie Baauw, Jennifer Loeber, Jessica Ingram, and Susana Raab. To download a pdf of Lauren’s GUP portfolio, click here: GUP21_Greenfield.

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Here’s a story: once upon a time I saw a Roger Ballen Show at Robert Klein Gallery in Boston and fell in love with him. The End.

Roger Ballen is an American who moved to South Africa to work for a mining company. While there, he began a series of photographs that has continued for 15 or 20 years. His portraits of the locals in mining communities, especially the Platteland, are arresting, shocking, and in so many ways beautiful. His images teeter on the edge of humor and dispair, with the viewer left to detirmine the position on the spectrum. It could be proffered that Ballen is merely using these strange, unfortunate looking people for his own material purposes, but according to Ballen, the sitters are very much a part of the action. He sets up situations, tableaux for these individuals to improvise and have fun. Somehow, these unbelieveable images are created, perfectly constructed, rich images that are timeless and undeniably awe-inspiring. (enough gushing)

Ballen has a new show open at Gagosian in NYC, I recommend it to everyone.

(taken from rogerballen.com)

Uno degli scatti più famosi di Roger Ballen: all'epoca della sua svolta stilistica il grande fotografo abbandonò gli spazi aperti per rivolgere la sua attenzione al mondo nascosto del disagio, dell'emarginazione e della follia

Immagini quadrate per stanze chiuse. Luoghi nei quali l’obiettivo di Roger Ballen ha messo sotto vuoto una dimensione inquieta e sinistra confinandola nello spazio asfittico delle sue fotografie, recentemente raccolte in un nuovo lavoro, “Boarding House”.

 

di   Claudia Papaleo

Ballen nacque nel 1950, nella New York in cui i barattoli di “Tomato”  si apprestavano a passare dal carrello della spesa alla serigrafia, e dove da un pennarello a vernice, imboscato dentro una tasca di jeans sbrindellata, sarebbe saltato fuori un quadro da milioni di dollari. Sin da ragazzino, oltre a respirare l’aria di cambiamento che attraversava l’arte, poté vivere a stretto contatto con la fotografia. Durante gli anni ’60, sua madre lavorò per la Magnum e fondò una delle prime gallerie fotografiche della grande mela. Di più, Ballen poté scorrazzare tra le gambe di monna lise come Cartier Bresson, Eliot Erwitt, Paul Strand e soprattutto Andre Kertesz. Il lavoro di quest’ultimo, infatti, è spesso rievocato nelle  immagini del fotografo, anche solo da piccoli accorgimenti aggiunti come  si aggiunge una punta di sale nella pentola.  

Pure, nei primi anni ’70 la macchina da foto si trasformò in un giocattolo da prendere sul serio. Tra bandiere schiaffate addosso al cielo, ammucchiate di capelli rincalzati nei pantaloni, e zeppe che marciavano per le strade come palazzi a portata di ratto, Ballen documentò la rivolta, arraffando le sue immagini succulente con qualche lazo di pellicola.

Diversi anni più tardi,  l’Africa del sud;  il suo sole tremulo e avvampato che scrosciava calore costante, fondendo le zone rurali in cui il fotografo cominciò a passare il tempo libero. Qui, la svolta.

Ballen abbandonò improvvisamente lo spazio aperto, i paesaggi ossigenati che lo circondavano, per intrappolare se stesso e la sua Rolleiflex 6X6 negli ambienti chiusi. Quello che doveva fare, infatti, era fotografare la trappola. Alcuni emarginati bianchi del posto accettarono di smezzare con lui l’aria delle loro camere scarne, marchiate dai segni di mobili estinti. Allora le sue foto, con tocco lapidario, ritrassero volti sconditi di qualunque serenità. Uomini e donne dai sorrisi ebeti, che fissano l’obiettivo con sguardi stranianti e corpi anomali, sui quali, a volte, cola qualche vestito smunto. Immagini che creano corrispondenze arbitrarie tra persone e animali, ponendoli in una realtà alterata che respinge e attrae, corrodendo qualsiasi controllo razionale in chi guarda. E ancora esseri umani spesso legati da lampanti vincoli sanguigni, di cui Ballen raffigura il lato sottilmente difettoso con una franchezza a tratti fastidiosa. Una serie di scatti disarmanti per la loro autenticità, in cui l’imperfezione punta i piedi di fronte alla macchina fotografica con dignità e coraggio.

Presto le stanze dalle mura ulcerate, che perdevano grumi di vernice su pavimenti dall’aria tombale, divennero i luoghi di strane fantasie dal retrogusto angosciante, e la macchina fotografica l’occhio che sembra guardare il fondo di una scatola degli scherzi, in cui gli oggetti vengono disposti secondo accoppiamenti ostili. Ballen, infatti, prese ad arredare gli spazi di cui disponeva assecondando le logiche di intuizioni visive minacciose, che tendono a snaturare le cose per come le conosciamo, caricandole di isteria.

Mani nodose, gambe spolpate, volti preda di urla eccessive, fanno da comparsa sbucando da vecchi scatoloni o da pile di materassi pregni di polvere, mentre qualche resto di bambola giace crudamente a terra senza possibilità di innocenza. Il tutto amplificato dalla presenza di stampelle ritorte, graffiti infantili e pelli zebrate di animali scuoiati.

Immagini psicotiche quelle di Ballen, lo scolo di un incubo che fa sgranare gli occhi e ti lascia con un battito accelerato, mentre allontani lo sguardo a braccetto della follia.

As I mentioned  a few posts below, Prof. Jonathan Holmes was going to (and indeed did) write a catalogue essay for The Arresting Image, the exhibition where Encore currently resides at the Plimsoll Gallery.  As I indicated when I wrote that post, that particular work is somewhat problematic and confusing for me in the way people respond to it.

I was grateful for J’s approach to writing about it and indeed the whole show, mounting his discussion on the messy and rather abject death of Marat and the famous Jean-Louis David painting that depicts the event.

His analysis of my own work was particularly appreciated, as my perception of the way the work itself is, in turn, perceived is frequently as a comic piece.   But for me, my drunken experiment falls further on the side of tragedy than comedy, although I know only too well how many very successful works (books, poems, films etc.) tightrope-walk the rickety fence between. It felt good for the work to be discussed with the seriousness with which I view it.

JH says:

The work has been selected for several exhibitions now perhaps because of the stark and pitiless insight it gives into human frailty, mental and emotional collapse, and sheer lonliness and exhaustion.  Indeed there is much to remind one of the Sydney Pollack movie ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They?’ 1969 where the dancers in a marathon dance competition dance themselves towards eventual self-destruction.  The end of Encore is brutal and shambolic. [ ] Rees takes us into a self-reflection that is both dark and troubling – at the edge of what one might wish to imagine.

J gave me the gist of his words at the opening (I had not had a catalogue to read until that night), mentioning his comparison with the Pollack  film of which I was aware but had never seen.  I knew about the marathon element, so his words made sense in terms of my own performance, but a couple of nights ago we rented and watched the film, inspired by Js comparison and I feel myself swollen with a whole new barrage of thought about endurance, exposure, performance and audience consumption.

The plot is this:  A dance marathon is held in depression-era California.  There is a big cash prize offered for the last couple standing.  Dancers are supervised by medical staff, take enforced brief but regular rest breaks and are fed 7 times a day during which they must keep on their feet and moving.  Many contestants including a farmhand and his young pregnant wife are taking part simply to have a roof over their heads and the promise of free food for as long as they can remain in the competition.  The contest continues for weeks.

Occasionally the opportunistic MC will launch into dramatic biographies or encourage dancers to break into an individual routine or song which elicits showers of pennies in appreciation from the audience.  Later in the contest he ‘spices up’ the action by cladding the participants in tracksuits and introducing ‘The Derby’, an event where couples, already at the point of exhaustion, race at breakneck speed around the dancefloor for ten minutes to the promise that the slowest three couples will be eliminated.

An elderly woman in the audience of the contest professes to favourite the main protagonists, couple number 67 (Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin), and offers a hand of friendship and support, following their progress like a television soap opera.  She seems unaware of the role she plays in their downfall despite her words of encouragement.

The entrants are uniformly humans at the end of their tether, clearly exploited for an audience whose main interest is in each individuals breaking point – whether physical or emotional.  And as both M, while watching with me, and the MC character observed, they maintain that interest in order to find something more wretched than their own lives and in comparison feel better about themselves.  Watching this harrowing film I have been made acutely aware that this may indeed be my greatest and deepest fear and that which moves me most: pleasure taken in the suffering of others.

Eventually couple 67 refuses the MCs offer to be married as a part of the show and are shown the list of expenses they have incurred throughout the competition for medical care and food that will be reclaimed if they win the prize money – leaving them with little more than nothing.

I was struck by the thought that I was watching a sister film to George Romero’s Dead trilogy (Night of the Living, Dawn of the and Day of the).  The exhausted dancers shuffling around barely moving or conscious like reanimated zombie flesh in a similarly bleak and hopeless scenario, preying upon and uncovering all human weakness.

Comparisons to the Big Brother phenomenon and the various ‘Idol’ shows are obvious too, although those participants desperation to be a part of the show is usually borne of something other than a basic human need like hunger.  But it seems the audience for human debasement is eternal if only to numb their own fears of inadequacy, which brings me circularly back to the fear expressed in my earlier post where I cited my worry that perhaps what I had created with Encore might be best categorised as ‘Big Brother for the cultured’.  I don’t doubt it’s value as a work (how can I when so many respond so positively to it?) but I’m not convinced that my description is not the truth and am somewhat suprised with these reflections today that a work I have made and performed might trade in this, my own deep fear of the enjoyment an audience might take in my own suffering.

Endurance works of mine like Encore are heavily influenced by Deborah Pollard, a remarkable artist and performer now based in Sydney but who I was lucky enough to work with on a few projects when she was the Artistic Director for Salamanca Theatre Company here in Hobart. Debs taught me a lot about sustain and about honouring an idea or an image by just holding it, actioning it, seeing it through to it’s conclusion -  whatever that may be.  I don’t know if Debs has ever seen TSHDT? but I’m going to recommend it at the very earliest opportunity.

There are subtle whispers and wonderings about working together again and to date these whispers have again brought up the E(ndurance) word.  Actually the E word has really been around a lot since Mike Parr was in-house at the TMAG for The Tilted Stage in the Summer.

The history of performance art is peppered with endurance works that in hindsight, superficially at least, feel a little like one-upmanship: who can physically damage themselves in the most serious/curious fashion?  Who can put themselves in the most danger?  Who is the biggest draw in the sideshow?

And how strange it can be when these works happen now… C’mon guys, Parr nailed his arm (his only arm!) to a wall just the other day on the Art History timeline, you think your Jackass-influenced art stunts can compete with that? Dude… read a book and see a bloody (actual, not colloquial) photo and dedicate some meditation to Mr Parr rather than a beer to Bam Margera.

Mr Parr always has a reason, a good reason for what he’s doing.  The gesture, whether violently nailing the arm or sitting quietly still, his head through an angled plane, always has a significant poetry and I guess this is the lesson for me to take away from all this big, hard thinking.  Do it – but make it mean something.

BTW go see the show which ends this weekend.  The Roger Ballen photographs and Amanda Davies paintings are unforgettable.  And now you’ve waded through this text don’t forget to appreciate the irony that the cornerstone of the show is the remarkable Tim Macmillan video Dead Horse.

“I’m writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.” – Dagon, H.P. Lovecraft

Aside from the fact that H.P. Lovecraft has a name that perfectly suits the horror genre, and a peculiar look about him which suggests he’d jumped straight out of the story A Shadow over Innsmouth, the man’s short fiction is, if not profound or incredibly skilled, then certainly imaginative and unusual.

Continuing with my list of favourite short story writers, Lovecraft is one of the few authors I go back to over and again. He has been hugely influential in horror and science fiction, even though many of his stories read like Sherlock Holmes tales. What makes his work so enduring is the nature of the horror to which his protagonists are ultimately exposed. Invariably, his characters epitomise the enlightened man – rational, intellectual, calmly inquisitive – who comes into contact with some mystery which unleashes an awesome truth that reveals to our hero the fragility of his own existence and ultimately leads to insanity or death.

Lovecraft’s single obsession is a universe that is fundamentally unknowable and destructive, no matter how far our sciences and religions purportedly develop us as a species. It’s a paranoid and pessimistic vision, much in tune with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s philosophies, but it’s one we must admit is as accessible as it is frightening. The fear and horror Lovecraft writes about goes well beyond the pain of death or torture, so heavily portrayed these days in crime fiction and dreary splatterporn films like Saw,Hostel and Frontier(s). His work challenges us to think more deeply about the moment of death when we have to face up to the fact that there is no afterlife, that we’ve been lying to ourselves all our lives, and when we die we cease to exist and return to entropy.

If Freud is right, and we as a species derive as much creative force from death as we do from life, Lovecraft must surely be a high priest of the death drive, or Thanatos – the ancient Greek personification of death, but also a word just as easily plucked from the Cthulhu mythos for which this strange author is most famous.

So many people to whom I’ve lent his books quickly return them with a look of wretched disgust on their faces. It’s a universal law that you either love or hate Lovecraft. His dialogue can be sickly, his style often clunky and littered with such overused and abused terms as “cyclopean”, “antediluvian” and “eldritch”, to name but a few. His misogynist views and racism are also well documented (and glorified by other misogynists like Michele Houellebeque), while the plot lines remained fairly standard throughout his writing career.

But all of these criticisms miss the point.

I personally feel his outdated prose lends itself to the stories he writes, and like J.G. Ballard and Mitch Cullin (Tidelands), or photographers Diane Arbus and Roger Ballen, Lovecraft is an artist who as turned away from what is traditionally accepted as aesthetic pure, and beaten his own strange path to create something hauntingly enduring.

Mythbusters:

Contrary to popular belief the Necronomicon did NOT first appear in Evil Dead films, starring Bruce Campbell, and it isn’t a real ‘lost’ tomb. It was invented by H.P. Lovecraft who credited the fictional “Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred” with its writing. It’s a theme he kept coming back to, just like the Miskatonic University in Providence.

My essential reads (roughly in order of favourites):

At the Mountains of Madness
The Dunwich horror
The Rats in the Walls
The Music of Erich Zann
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Colour out of Space

A number of authors have paid tribute to Lovecraft, of which my favourite story must be Stephen King’s Jerusalem’s Lot, August Derleth’s Dweller in the Darkness, and Robert Bloch’s various stories appearing in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Reputed famous fans:

Guillermo Del Toro
Neil Gaiman
Clive Barker
Joe R. Landsdale
H. R. Geiger
Alan Moore

Gaiman also who wrote a pretty good Lovecraftian story called Shogoth’s Old Peculiar – probably a cheap shot at an unusual but tasty beer called Theakston’s Old Peculiar, which is now associated with the Harrogate Crime Festival.

Read here what others have said about his books on Goodreads and Amazon.

Music to read by:
Judas Priest’s Blood Red Skies
Diary of Dreams
Check out this blog talking about Lovecraft’s influence on metal.

Watch this rather comical movie trailer for a period short film of Call of Cthulhu

Like most other people, I can’t get enough of Roger Ballen at the moment.

Doug McClermont has treated us to a great interview with Roger Ballen. It crescendos in a battery of ‘Ballenisms’ on the evolution of man, the rejection of political correctness and the common id of all great portraits.

Sergeant F. de Bruin, Department of Prisons employee, Orange Free State, 1992 © Roger Ballen

RB: But what is the most important thing in that picture?

DM: His stare?

RB: The wire. Before I saw him I found the wire. And then when I turned the corner there he was … but I associate that picture with the wire. Without the wire there’s no photograph. That’s what the picture is about, not necessarily him. The wire looks like his lips.

DM: I know there’s a formal aspect to the images, but that face has seen so much.

RB: Form makes the content! Without your ribs you’re just a deflated nothing. The forms bring out the content and create meaning in themselves. So it’s very important to see the images as formal instruments as well as the content in and of itself.

DM: But it’s also narrative.

RB: It is, you can’t separate the two.

DM: This guy has seen so much and It’s all reflected right there in his mug. There are so many stories behind those eyes… what we bring to it.

RB: You have to find your own world in that picture. A lot of what you find you can’t explain. You can’t put into words. But you have an emotional relationship. Like life.

DM: If you could have put it into words, you would have written him as a character in a book.

RB: Basically, some people see him as a monkey. The character of a buffoon and a monkey in a prison guard, whatever. There are all those masks you see in the face. The face reveals the human condition in all sorts of ways. He’s funny, he’s tragic.

DM: Like the masks of theater…

RB: He’s vicious. He’s a monkey. He’s a pompous prison guard.

DM: He seems simultaneously weak and evil to me.

RB: Behind the face is always the monkey. Remember that. I’ve been living in Africa a long time. I’ve really seen a lot about the human condition. Behind the face is the monkey. You won’t get me to change that point. I don’t care if every PC person wants to shoot me for it.

DM: In terms of evolution, you mean?

RB: It’s Freudian…

DM: The id.

RB: Yes, the monkey is the id. Each image is like someone’ s id… and then I bring mine and put it on top of it. If it’s good artwork, it’s everybody id in some way. They’re heroes of the human id. Jess and Tessie, [the drooling twins] you see who you were a million years ago…a monkey…and you were that monkey. Subconsciously, genetically in the back your mind it’s the monkey. You’re a monkey. You see it our ancestors, that’s why the picture is so strong. Simple as that, because people relate to it. They’re brutal, they’re simple, they’re drooling but we relate to them. We see ourselves as humans deep inside them. It’s Neanderthal. Half man, half monkey.

DM: Chromosomes definitely come to mind when you see that image.

RB: No, it’s not about chromosomes – that’s PC thinking – the only thing that crosses your mind is: there’s my face. There’s my id. That’s what I come from. I come from a monkey. That’s your cousin in that picture.

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Doug McClemont is the former Editor-in-Chief of HONCHO, Torso, Mandate, Inches and Playguy. His writing regularly appears in publications such as Publishers’ Weekly, Library Journal and Screw. He has written introductory essays for several monographs on contemporary art and is currently at work on a book of short stories entitled Little Morticians.

Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Location: the OCAD auditorium

portrait of Roger Ballen (taken by Paul Ballen)

True to how I imagined him to be, Roger Ballen is as every bit as quirky and enigmatic as his photographs. His lecture at the OCAD auditorium was simultaneously vague and informative; vague, in that his lecture perpetuated even more questions from his audience; and informative, in the feeling that the veil of enigma surrounding these places has somewhat been lifted.

His stories are surreal.

Before my starry-eyed self stood a man obsessed with connections. Whether or not this is reflective of a general belief in the interconnectedness that exists within the known universe I may never know; but one thing is for certain: I left the lecture with an even deeper sense of awe for the man.

“Memory, like photography, is not exactly an objective way of remembering the past…”

Listening to his lecture was akin to being drawn into a good and gripping ghost story. These ghost stories, however, are far from fiction. I was suddenly transported into a place that exists only in my wildest nightmares, deep into a world where Pandora’s monsters have materialized into their very tangible counterparts and now roam about unabashedly. And so it would seem that the boarding house[*] Ballen so bravely ventured into has become iconic within the small South African community where he’s spent a good chunk of his career documenting. It is a place where criminals seek refuge, where scandal and injustice run rampant, where mystics, witch doctors, and spirits fill every known and undiscovered crevice. The results of his photographic journey have rendered visuals that come at you at all angles with these well-iterated philosophical questions: Where are we? Who are we?

Ballen accompanies every photograph with a true-to-life ghost story or tragedy; else, he points out various forms within the picture that relate to each other. Furthermore, these relational forms appear as though they were generated by some dark and serendipitous force of fate. Of course, Ballen could just have a knack for capturing these odd moments on film, but my mind is already set on the possibility that Ballen has been commissioned to do these photographs by the devil himself.

Or not.

Ballen explains that photographs are not necessarily a duplication of reality; rather, photographs are really just experiments in seeing and perceiving. To take a photograph is to showcase the ability to perceive visual stimuli through the lens of a camera. His photographs are neither real nor unreal, simply because he believes the notion behind “reality” is based on its propensity to change constantly:

“I don’t really know what’s real, do you? [...] It is not staged – it is all about seeing. Nothing is ever the same, and we can do nothing to control that. You look up from your camera and everything has changed. 1/500th of a second later, and everything is different.”

When you get right down to the meat of the matter, Ballen’s Boarding House is all about the human condition. The animals and the drawings that pervade these odd spaces provide profound evidence of instinct, survival, and tensions [that arise between certain relationships] at play:

“I think good art has to contemplate the human condition. (Though, if I can do one thing with the word ‘art’, it will be to throw it in the trash, burn it, and invent ten or twenty different words to describe the visual experience). [...]

Being in a place like the boarding house tells you a lot about the human condition. Watching TV does not.”

Pathos (c) Roger Ballen, 2005; i: For Ballen, 'pathos' is the ultimate representation of the human condition, as it defines internal pain.; ii: The people who resided within the boarding house refused to move this stuffed ape, for fear that if touched, bad luck will instantly come upon the disturber.

Fragments (c) Roger Ballen, 2005

I suppose it’s only fitting that he ends the lecture with Fragments. Admit it: while you find the photograph unsettling, you also find yourself torn between thinking this is real and thinking this is staged. Well, it isn’t – staged that is. Moreover, Ballen finishes off the lecture quite matter-of-factly: “He committed suicide.”

Fret not, for there is light at the end of the dark abyss. “Many people say these photographs are dark, and in essence, I suppose they are. But perhaps one has to understand the dark, before one can understand the light.”

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[*] Fittingly enough, the Boarding House is located 2-3 kilometres away from the Shadow Chamber building. These buildings are separated by a series of rough and broken terrain; yet again, another fitting description, as the words “road to hell” immediately came into my mind.

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All source photographs, unless otherwise specified, were taken from Roger Ballen’s official site: www.rogerballen.com. flattened to fit paper assumes no financial gain from these photographic sources, and has restricted these photographs for illustrative and exemplary purposes only. Visit the OCAD Professional Gallery for more information on Boarding House.

Cut Loose. Roger Ballen, 2005

In critiques of Roger Ballen’s photography I haven’t seen more than mere passing references to Abu Ghraib. New York Art Beat coyly described Ballen’s prints as “Reminiscent of the images from Abu Ghraib” and continued, “Untitled (1069) shows a gaunt man clad only in sweatpants. His head hangs down, toes curled and fingers scraping the wall.”

Culture Vulture afforded Ballen just one sentence in its review of the After Nature group exhibition, “Roger Ballen’s b/w photos draw on our deep visual memories of Abu Ghraib, without truly recording any torture.”

In real time and the real world Ballen’s work has absolutely nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. But my charge is to speculate on the meandering visual cultures and cross overs that wash over us daily.

Let me start by saying that Ballen has not in any way been influenced by Abu Ghraib. He began his Shadow Chamber work in 2001 and continued for 6 more years. His visual vocabulary was drawn from his own portfolio and observations from as early as the 70s when he photographed in homes of the poor with exposed wires, smears and semi-feral mammals.

Prowling. Roger Ballen, 2001

New York Photo Festival will have to be special in 2009 if it is to eclipse Ballen’s show-stealing lecture of last years inaugural show. Just as Ballen had quietly plied his craft for decades without much commercial interest, so he quietly took to the stage for the unrockstar 11am slot on the first morning. Many concluded at midday that they may as well go home there and then. Ballen was it; “So if you missed it sorry the festival might just be all down hill after this.”

Why? Apart from being unexpected, Ballen took the viewer deep into a closely controlled isolated world and into the psychological uncertainties of his vision. Ballen is the perfect foil to typologies, minimalist cliche, first-project enthusiasm and the manicured fine art of contemporary photography.

Effigy and Prowling are disconcerting, bizarre, staged and lit with hard flash – in other words they hold the same characteristics as the Abu Ghraib images.

It seems the comparison is so glaring no-one has wanted to state it! Is it with guilt we accept Ballen’s work into an art aesthetic, and then stand with repulsed incertitude before the Abu Ghraib images? Much has been made of Ballen’s hypnotic work and his vortex of image and dis-logic. I wouldn’t suggest he is a mystic seer, but if some sort of visual, global Zeitgeist exists, I would suggest that Ballen tapped it. Few commentators have readily acknowledged this visual convergence. Why? Strange forces.

We have argued the ethics and presence of torture in non-photographic media, but have we failed to satisfactorily take up issues surrounding the aesthetics of torture in photography?

Maybe all the visual culture theorists were worn out and distracted after the publication of the Abu Ghraib images; maybe I am writing this a year or two too late; maybe visual similarities aren’t enough for a water tight hypothesis? But, you must admit the smudging and blurring of faces is further provocation toward comparison and spinal shudders.

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There are some amazing resources online for Roger Ballen. The indubitable Lens Culture has a 25 image gallery and 18 minute audio interview.

Heather Morton compares his Ballen’s with Ralph Meatyard, Joel Peter-Witkin and Tim Roda.

Colin Pantall does the best blogosphere survey of Ballen’s aphorisms, antics and work.

Hot Shoe has a solid review of the Shadow Chamber book.

The V&A offers three very short audio snippets by Ballen.

And, these are the best of the articles provided by Ballen’s own website – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

Gup

Foto: Roger Ballen

O jornal britânico The Guardian novamente traz mais um grande fotógrafo para eleger seu melhor clique. Desta vez, é Roger Ballen que destaca de seu trabalho o recorte fotográfico que mais o marcou. Ballen explica as razões para tal escolha:

“Esse homem está morto. Ele se matou em sua cama. Esta é uma foto dos pés dele e do prato com comida que fora deixado ali. Essa foi uma das muitas coisas extraordinárias que testemunhei na casa das divisórias, fora de Joanesburgo, onde tirei esta foto.

O prédio é uma antiga indústria gigantesca, construída 70/80 anos atrás. Não sei bem em que ponto as pessoas começaram a viver ali, mas quando eu fui lá pela primeira vez , em 2000, eles usavam todos os tipos de materiais que pudessem encontrar para dividir o piso principal em cômodos. Foi por isso que chamei de casa das divisórias.

Eu conhecia esse homem, apesar de nunca ter descoberto seu nome. Ele era uma pessoa tímida que  não saia muito. Ajudava as pessoas de lá levando a elas comida e água. O homem sentia-se à vontade com alguns animais dos arredores e tinha alguns cachorros e gatos.

Certo dia, andava por lá e o vi estirado na cama, morto. Alguém me disse que ele tinha se matado por conta do boato de que as autoridades demoliriam o prédio, então ele seria forçado a deixar o local. A figura e o prato me disseram logo a essência daquela pessoa.

Eu não tive uma reação emocional na hora, apenas vi uma pessoa morta.  Então você vê o quão brutal a vida pode ser para quem vive em locais como aquele por décadas. Poderia ser você. Isso é uma coisa importante a se entender.”

G2, Arts, Thursday.

Viv Groskop writes about the play Madame de Sade which Judi Dench is starring in (45 cm). It has received poor reviews. I just wanted to show you a good quote from the article:

“Of course, no one expects a play to be praised simply because it was written or directed by a woman, or because it stars women (although you do wonder, “Why the hell not?” when these things are an event in themselves).”

The guardian are good at spicing up their mostly male art dominated arts section with some feminist articles every now and then. But why not just write more about the women?

I guess they only reflect what is going on in the world where men still tend to have the power. Even in the art world.

I have noticed that the most male dominated the guardian supplement is film & music where it is absolutely shocking how much is written about men compared to women.

Surely there must be as many talented female musicians, actors and directors as male ones?

But are they just not good at marketing themselves?

Or do we just prefer reading, watching and listening to men?

Roger Ballen’s best shot (14 cm)

When you first encounter a Roger Ballen photograph, you will most likely be met with a perplexing combination of wonder and discomfort. What is hung before you, in Ballen’s trademark square format, are lushly printed black and white photographs of places and people darkly imagined and disconcertingly real. Body parts peek out from unlikely crevices. Faces peer out at you, vulnerable, yet almost sinister. Animals roam into Ballen’s constructed spaces; else, their [animal] parts – tails, paws, and even the tiniest hint of a furry head – peek out from underneath sofa cushions. Hybridized figures made up of dismembered dolls’ parts, animal parts, and human appendages inhabit crude interiors like living, breathing chimeras. This is the shadow world, and Ballen bears witness to all that occurs within.

Scavenging (Boarding House, 2004)

from the series, Shadow Chamber

Ballen’s photographs hit somber notes for the most part; yet, in spite of their outwardly desolate attributes, the end results are also lush and playful, his subjects, empowered in their vulnerability. His compositions depict a harmonious mingling of two extremes – they are hauntingly dark and light-heartedly whimsical, discomfiting and also familiar. It is with no surprise to learn that Roger Ballen has lent [somewhat of] a curatorial hand in the installation of his much deserved two-and-a-half-month slot at the OCAD Professional Gallery. Upon entering the space itself, you are immediately met with selections from his latest series, Boarding House, where an enigmatic ambiguity is most certainly maintained. Illustrated within these neatly hung frames are the indiscernible places that “exist in some form or another in most people’s minds”. The seamless interplay between what was originally there and what has been added mirrors Ballen’s propensity to merge documentary photography with theatrical fabrication. The title photograph, for instance, depicts a landscape littered with found objects that may have belonged to a particular household in this impoverished South African community. The photograph itself, on the other hand, is that of a make-shift stage. Feast your wandering eyes on the center-most part of the photograph, where an eyeless doll’s head is meticulously propped on top of a nondescript base. Tilted ever so slightly, perhaps strategically for effect, its blank eyes peer curiously at you. But hold on now – the doll’s head is not eyeless; rather, its lids are merely closed. You stifle an awkward giggle – you must be seeing things.

Boarding House (Boarding House, 2008)

The odd table-like structure on which [the doll’s head] rests resembles an altar; this could very well be a sacrificial offering to some unnamed god, or else, this is a representation of the deity itself. The space that inhabits the background of this strange centerpiece is littered with crude drawings, childish in manner, but profound in its execution. Charles Reeve, curator of OCAD’s Professional Gallery, quotes Robert Cook on the written companion to this exhibition:

“The drawings on the wall were initially found in the settings he was working within. In the process of making certain photographs however, Ballen and his subjects started adding to the existing imagery with chalk and other materials; they are an organic response to, and an extension of, a particular subjective situation and a particular physical context.”

Still, the illusion lies in the fact that the center wall is, upon closer observation, not a wall. Spot the sleeping child to the left and you will find the secret of its construction. The wall is made up of a heavy cloth – perhaps a thick blanket of some sort, or a large rug. Spot the flap, barely noticeable, resting gently against the child’s elbow. Futhermore, observe both the animate and inanimate “objects” that rest at the foot of this “altar”; all are rendered motionless, frozen, in the presence of this “deity”. You shake your head incredulously, surprised to find that you have unwittingly jumped into the story.

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It is interesting to observe Ballen’s gradual progression from straight documentary to visual psychological studies. While the spaces his subjects inhabit in his later works tell of a struggling community swimming in poverty, his resulting compositions are entirely arrived upon through a collaborative relationship between artist and subject. Charles Reeves compares Ballen’s art-making approaches to Hans Bellmer and Man Ray, but the playful nature that emanates from his various subjects is quite reminiscent of Francesca Woodman’s photographic experiments with her body and the spaces her body inhabits. Just as Woodman has relied on the camera’s unpredictable nature to capture motion blurs in a most dynamic fashion, Ballen places much of his instincts on the unpredictable ways his subjects interact within these fabricated spaces. Even the still objects he chooses to photograph seem to reverberate with unexpected life. Chairs, Asian Bazaar, a photograph from one of his earlier series, Dorps, is a perfect example, as the photograph is actually quite telling of the direction his art-making is going to take. These stools, weathered and aged with time, their stuffing spilling out of their respective cloth covers, almost appear to be conversing with each other.

Francesca Woodman, House #4 (Providence, Rhode Island, 1976)

Chairs, Asian Bazaar (from the series, Dorps)

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The second room features selections from Dorps, Platteland, Outland, and Shadow Chamber. Arranged chronologically from the years these works were produced, here you will witness Ballen’s gradual shift from the documentary to the surreal. To supplement the exhibit, a short 9-minute video by Saskia Vredeveld features Ballen’s chosen subjects in full motion, adding insight to the places and the people who have so deeply affected Ballen’s direction.

from the series, Platteland

from the series, Outland

from the series, Shadow Chamber

Boarding House will run through to the end of May at the OCAD Professional Gallery. Throughout the remaining two or so odd months, a series of talks and tours will be held in conjunction with the exhibit. On Thursday evenings, there will be a 20-30 minute discussion of the exhibition. This is, of course, free and open to the public, and will begin promptly at 6:30 pm inside the gallery. Phaidon books will also be releasing Roger Ballen’s latest monograph, Boarding House, which will feature all of the acclaimed photographs taken in this series. Roger Ballen himself will be present at the OCAD auditorium at 6:30 pm on the 8th of April to deliver a lecture, as well as sign copies of Boarding House. You can bet your bottom dollar I will be present, both Shadow Chamber and Boarding House on hand.

Also among those slated to deliver a talk on the exhibit over the coming months are Blake Fitzpatrick, director of Photographic Studies at Ryerson University, and Sophie Hackett, assistant curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Charles Reeves, curator of the OCAD Professional Gallery, already delivered his talk on the 5th of March – the evening of the exhibition opening.

installation view with Outland, OCAD Pro Gallery

installation view with Vredeveld video, OCAD Pro Gallery

For more information on Boarding House, visit www.ocad.ca/progallery, or drop by the gallery to see these prints yourself; they are far more engaging in person.

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All source photographs, unless otherwise specified, were taken from Roger Ballen’s official site: www.rogerballen.com. flattened to fit paper assumes no financial gain from these photographic sources, and has restricted these photographs for illustrative and exemplary purposes only.

Para Ballen, inspirado pelos pintores norte-americanos das décadas de 1960-70, tudo o que reside dentro do campo visual é significativo. Com um trabalho carregado de texturas e subjetividade, suas fotos trazem um sentimento de voyeurismo que temos nos trabalhos de Weegee e Diane Arbus.

Suas fotos são complexas, requintadamente compostas e quase sempre detêm alguma tensão, mesmo muito tempo após o primeiro olhar.

Roger Ballen mantêm uma fundação com seu nome, dedicada ao ensino da fotografia na África do Sul. A Roger Ballen Foundation cria e apóia programas de qualidade para promover a compreensão e a valorização do meio, que de outro modo, seria bastante difícil naquele país.

Para conhecer mais o trabalho de Ballen, acesse aqui.