Opening Lecture: Roger Ballen – roger ballen.! drawing meets photography
The Evolution of the ''Ballenesque''
For the opening of roger ballen.! drawing meets photography, Roger Ballen takes us inside the distinctive visual universe he has developed over decades. The lecture explores Roger Ballen’s deeply unique aesthetic, the “Ballenesque” and the ideas, symbols and subconscious impulses that shape his work.
Blurring the boundaries between photography, drawing, painting and installation, his practice transforms the photographic image into a space where reality, imagination and the subconscious intersect. Through selected works and insights into his artistic process, he reveals how drawing became an integral part of his photographic universe, expanding photography beyond the purely observed into something constructed, layered and deeply psychological.
After the lecture there will be an open Q&A with Roger Ballen, followed by a book signing.
About the artist
Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950. After arriving in South Africa in the early 80s, he began photographing while travelling extensively, later turning his attention to the towns, and people he encountered in rural South Africa. Street scenes gradually gave way to domestic interiors, where walls, objects, wires and marks became increasingly important elements within his photographs. By the 1990s, he coined the term “documentary fiction” to describe an aesthetic that wavers between document and staging.
After the turn of the century, his photographs became increasingly complex and psychological, as the human figure began to share the frame with animals, drawings, objects and fragments of the body. Over the years, Roger Ballen expanded his scope, working increasingly across drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. Human figures increasingly gave way to doll parts, masks, objects, drawings, and animals.
Roger Ballen also turned to film, creating the 2012 music video I Fink You Freeky for the South African band Die Antwoord. His works are held in prominent institutional collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.