One of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century, Roger Ballen’s career spans over forty years. His strange and extreme works confront and challenge viewers to journey into their own minds as he explores the deeper recesses of his own. Often blurring the line between reality and fiction, Ballen’s black and white square format photographs evolved from a stark documentary style to what he now describes as ‘documentary fiction’.
The Theatre of Apparitions, work from the past decade, is a short psychological thriller that explores the dark space between sanity and insanity, dream and reality. Separated into seven chapters or “acts”, The Theatre of Apparitions is a treat of Ballenesque images taking viewers on a deep journey into their subconscious. Inspired by the sight of hand-drawn carvings on blacked-out windows in an abandoned women’s prison, Ballen started to experiment using different spray paints on glass and then ‘drawing on’ or removing the paint with a sharp object to let natural light through. The results are like prehistoric cave-paintings: the black, dimensionless spaces on the glass are canvases onto which Ballen carves his thoughts and emotions. Fossil-like facial forms and dismembered body parts coexist uncomfortably with vaporous, ghost-like shadows. Earthly and otherworldly, physical and spiritual, his work transcends all traditional concepts of photography.