July/August 08
An Ever Expanding Universe (WA) > WA
Because of its title, my initial reaction to this exhibition was one of curiosity. Read More
Art Deco 1910 - 1939 (VIC) > VIC
With its Bakelite radio, Tamara De Lempicka painting and luxurious dressing table complete with intricate ivory inlays, the opening room of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Art Deco show says it all. Read More
Melbourne Art Fair (VIC) > VIC
With 80 commercial galleries, 10 project spaces, two specially commissioned installations and anticipated sales at the $10.5 million mark, the Melbourne Art Fair isn’t the sort of place to play things down. Read More
Puberty Blues
To stay sane in this world it is sometimes necessary to step back and laugh at the sheer nonsense that follows in the wake of a moral scandal. Read More
Robert Jenyns (NSW) > NSW
Pop psychologists and armchair analysts are masters of the succinct and the obvious. Read More
The enchanted forest: new gothic storytellers (VIC) > VIC
Curiouser and curiouser... a new approach to gothic. Read More
Turn, Turn, Turn: the past talks to the present (NSW) > NSW
Nick Waterlow is the only person to have curated more than one Biennale of Sydney. Read More
VIVID National Photographic Festival (ACT) > ACT
Australian photography festivals are seemingly multiplying at a rapid pace, with VIVID being the latest member to join the growing team. Read More
Roger Ballen
By Judith McGrath
New York born photographer Roger Ballen has lived in South Africa for over thirty years. An exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia tracing his artistic journey from 1983 to 2006, reveals how his style has evolved from documentary based subjects, through constructed scenarios, to unique artistically framed surreal images.
Ballen trained and worked as a geologist and it seems he has brought his ‘field’ eye to the camera. A geologist looks at the landscape in search of clues to what hides beneath. He excavates; delves under the surface, breaks open rocks and examines different aspects of their composition in an effort to understand how the smallest element can effect the whole.
In this exhibition we can trace Ballen’s transition from geologist to artist via his photographs. In the beginning he captured the surface of his subjects then he began to penetrate the veneer and reveal hidden layers of reality.
Ballen’s early photographs document the rural villages and people of South Africa. His portraits of Sergeant F. de Bruin, Department of Prisons Employee, Orange Free State, (1992) and Dresie and Casie, twins (1993) are not pretty pictures of smiling folk dressed up and posed in a fine setting. Instead the subjects stand against blank walls as Ballen documents their outward physiognomy. He also suggests something of their inner attitudes. We see in de Bruin a tired looking government employee with only a uniform to give him authority while the twins, two grown men in dirty work clothes, glare menacingly back at us.
Roger Ballen, Exhaustion, 2006, silver gelatin, 80 x 80cm. On loan from Roger Ballen, 2007. © Roger Ballen. Image courtesy Stills Gallery, Sydney.
Ballen’s work evolved from recording reality to staging fictions. His scenarios own a sense of the surreal as they expose something of the human condition. Because we tend to connect photography with reality, these images can be confrontational. Our immediate reaction is to turn away but it’s too late as just a quick glimpse is enough to ignite our curiosity about the subject, mood or disparate objects in the frame. Perhaps on some level we connect with the detritus of humanity in the compositions, or it may be the need to find something relevant in an unorthodox exhibit is what makes us delve beneath the surface and infuse the image with our own meaning.
Ballen’s more recent works take us further into the surreal. Heads are hidden and faces are covered to create a sense of anonymity. By not defining a specific individual, the artist invites viewers to put themselves in the picture. For example in Loner (2001) a man, clad only in shorts, lies on a pallet in a semi foetal position facing the wall, his back is to the camera. Hung on the wall above him is a large homemade crucifix composed of a discarded baby doll tied to a cross made from two thin rods. The word ‘GOD’ is spelled out in large letters on a piece of paper stuck to the foot of the cross. We want to walk away but are stopped by the white dog nestled in the small of the man’s back, its head turned to look at us and invite us into the image. As we are unable to connect with the figure we must put our own narrative to the scene. Is the man praying, sleeping, or is he dead? There are a variety of social, political and religious interpretations of this photograph and no doubt viewers, should they enter the scenario, will investigate each one before coming to their own conclusion. This is intelligent and emotional viewing.
Some photographs reference aspects of painting and drawing. Mottled background effects give the illusion of a painterly texture, while Klee-like linear ‘scribbles’, either in the form of child-like chalk drawings on a background wall or twisted wire forms, are placed in the frame. These effects adding yet another level of ambiguity to the work.
Ballen’s most recent imagery reveals how, even when the photographer removes the human presence from the image, a sense of the human spirit remains. What seems dark in mood at first glance can, on close
inspection, own a lightness of spirit.
Ballen's black and white images demand we get involved; to go beyond the scenario, to see the composition’s elements as individual entities in relation to the whole, and to accept the complexity of the image and its intent. His photographs take us beneath the surface of life to reveal the rich humanity to be found in both his subjects and his audience.
Roger Ballen the artist makes geologists of us all.
Roger Ballen, Old man, Ottoshoop (from the “Dorps series”), 1983, silver gelatin, 80 x 80cm. On loan from Roger Ballen, 2007 © Roger Ballen. Image courtesy Stills Gallery, Sydney.
Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal – Roger Ballen Photography is at the Art Gallery of Western Australia until 4 May.
Judith McGrath is an arts writer and reviewer based in Perth.
