DD2000 - Design Practice: Roger Ballen

A few days ago I went to the Manchester Art Gallery to see the exhibition Shadowland: Photographs by Roger Ballen 1983-2011. The gallery consisted of some of Ballen’s most famous pieces, ranging from his earlier pieces in the 1980’s and covering almost three decades of his work. I was initially unfamiliar with Ballen’s work, but instantly recognised one piece in particular, his iconic ‘Twins’ photograph.


 Indeed, all of the work presented in the exhibition were photographs and were quite difficult to wrap the mind around due to the context of some of them.

All of the photographs are in black and white and have a gritty appearance; the subjects of the photo are striking, and hard to comprehend – they range from simpler objects presented in a unique photographic perspective that appears in all of Ballen’s work that culminates in an abstract image of actual objects, while some photo’s are somewhat grotesque and akin to caricatures. Even though the art itself was not particularly appealing to me, it is clear that Ballen has raw passion for his subject matter. It was explained in the exhibition that Ballen had spent a major part of his life in Johannesburg in South Africa, and many of the pieces on the walls were merely photographs he had taken; the photo’s themselves are hard to distinguish from paintings, as Ballen’s concepts of spacing and interactions between the subjects often result in an alien composition that seems impossible to have been caught on camera, instead seemingly stemming from an artistic imagination; this may indeed have been Ballen’s intention when he took the photographs, giving them their unique feel -  yet to me, seems almost disturbing, perhaps mirroring the large difference in cultures.

I found the exhibition very insightful, however the images themselves were not to my liking and I found them quite disturbing and difficult to look at.
 

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