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Background information
This out-of-print German-language volume 'Roger Ballen. Fotografien 1969-2009' accompanied the exhibition of the work of the photographer, who was born in New York in 1950, in Munich. It was also published as an English-language edition.
"For more than fifty years, Roger BALLEN has been portraying the impoverished white rural population in South Africa - day laborers, watchmen or workers who eke out a meager existence on the so-called flat land.
The scenes of the theatrical productions are simple dwellings whose barren interiors are transformed into a claustrophobic stage on which the actors act with sometimes violent expressiveness. Selected props such as wires and worn furniture develop a strangely bizarre life of their own in surreal harmony with the characters. There is something absurdly grotesque and at the same time menacingly oppressive about the documentary-style shots. They show a hermetic world that can be read as a disturbing image of psychotic energies..." (slightly adapted publisher's text, © Kerber Verlag, 2010)
Content
A twelve-page introduction is followed by an extensive plate section with black-and-white photographs showing worldwide locations in the USA, India, Indonesia, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Israel in the 1970s; the other photographs in South Africa were taken in South Africa.
The catalog volume concludes with an extensive appendix consisting of a short biography, a list of exhibitions and book publications on Roger BALLEN's work (all up to 2009). The thumbnails at the end of the book provide detailed information on the individual works.