Roger Ballen’s idiosyncratic subject choice and aesthetic is immediately recognizable in each of his photos. It is not without reason that his new book and exhibition is called Ballenesque: his very personal and inimitable style has become a term. "The goal is to challenge my own mind. To let the mind talk to itself."

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His series Platteland, Images from Rural South Africa showed photos of poor white people who had never before been the subject of a photo series. The photos showed poverty and backwardness, ugliness and isolation in a lost group of people of rural South Africa. After publishing the book, Roger Ballen devoted himself entirely to staged photography, using ‘his’ people to express his own vision of the human mind. “My photos are not about my own psyche but about the archetype of the human mind. It is a very complicated theme because it is about the philosophy of aesthetics and perception."

After Platteland, many more series followed which became increasingly more bizarre in character. In Outland he started to portray scenes with local people. In later series, he occasionally replaced people with animals and walls full of drawings, which he painted in a ‘childish’ style. Although he clung to photography as a medium, his images became stories of an inner world.

Roger Ballen himself said that “Photography is different from all art forms, because photography depends on the outside world. Everything you see in my photos is a physical object, but at the same time they are the record of the transformation of my mind. The outside world brings its own meaning, but I try to create a meaning for myself and use my photos as metaphors. When you see people in my photos you see more Roger than those people. In my earlier work it was more about those people than about me. The most important thing I want to do is to take photos that have an impact on myself. They have to inspire myself and give me a kind of electrical feeling."

The locations where Roger Ballen photographed remained the homes of the poor white farmers of South Africa, but they also served more as the backdrop and workspace of his own imagination. For the project Boarding House and Asylum of the Birds, he photographed abandoned spaces owned by the gold mines.

Archetype of the mind

For Ballen, there is no difference between the reality of the photographic image and the fantasy of the mind. According to him, the subconscious mind only remembers the deeper meaning. His images are about the human mind, fed by his study of psychology, and in particular the theories ofJung. “At the time I was studying in Berkeley, where humanistic psychology was en vogue. People tried to explain human behavior using scientific methods. Jung was interested in the unconscious mind. He developed the theory of the archetype, innate unconscious patterns of ideas.”

Ballen's photography became a photographic search for the archetype of our mind, for the universal fears and motives of man. In his own words: “What is the purpose of what I do? The goal is to challenge my own mind. To let the mind talk to itself. It is easy to use psychological terms, but if you really start to think about them, those terms simply fall apart, and turn out to be meaningless. If you want to understand art, words are not enough. We have the word art but what does art actually mean? What is its meaning and value? The purpose of photography is to enlighten me personally and invite me to learn from it. I am the mother; the baby is born and looks at the mother. And I like the baby and then he can hang on the wall in a gallery. Then I hope the photos have a transformative effect. I hope my photos have an impact on the viewer. I am not a social or political photographer. I am not interested in making political statements. My work is purely psychological and existential and of course aesthetic."

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"All photos have a momentary character. They are not repeatable.

‍Human shadows

It is not a coincidence that Roger Ballen has made many series about animals, ranging from rats to birds to reptiles. He has a great connection with animals, because they are not affected by the cultural varnish that is the human consciousness. “I have a lot of pets at home, a few hundred. I also live close to the Johannesburg zoo. Unfortunately, I cannot take the lions there as pets. Animals are a symbol of nature and our animal behavior. In my photos, the metaphors refer to human society. But in my photos, I put so many meanings and so many different aspects of our relationship with the animals and with ourselves that they are difficult to evaluate. My photos are about the impossibility of living with ourselves and dealing with our own shadows. For me he bird is the archetypal symbol of purity, the connection between heaven and earth. At this moment I am making a series of rats. For many people, rats have a negative connotation, but the more I work with the rat, the more I see themas the archetype of openness to the world.”

Ballen's photos are mysterious and dark in tone, and occasionally lurid, but he thinks criticism of his work says much about our own ability to deal with the tone of his photos. “I often get the comment that my photos are dark. Then I say: it is dark outside. You have day and night. What's wrong with the night? Are you afraid of the dark? What is the problem with the subject of my photos? It's about fear. People cannot accept their own fear. My photos are subconscious barriers of emotions that suppress people. Almost everyone is afraid of their own shadow. That is why our society looks like this. I don't make art to disturb people. It is our spirit that disturbs us.”

Multi-layer process

The process of Roger Ballen's work is intuitive and multi-layered. To describe his work, he avoids the words ‘staged’ or ‘directed’.“Something that has been staged can be repeated like a play in a theater, then it is predictable. Staged photography has no impact on me. It tries to tell me that it is real but it doesn't touch me. Everything in the photo is a tool for me to tell my story. All photos have a momentary character. They are not repeatable. That is inherent in photography. In photography all forms come together so that together they create meaning.” Neither does Ballen call his working process spontaneous. “I decide to make a drawing on the wall and then a next step arises, to which I respond again. Sometimes I take hundreds of photos before it is as I want it."

Metaphors

Roger Ballen, who has been working for twenty years as a geologist in search of gold and other minerals, compares descending into a goldmine with investigating his own mind. “The mine is symbolic of my mind. I also go into the depths of my own mind.”

In his work, every person, animal, object or painting is a metaphor. “Metaphors have a complex, unconscious meaning. Most metaphors are images and cannot be easily deciphered. My work has a great visual complexity.You cannot easily identify what my photos are about. If you could do that then it was probably a bad photo. You can't rationalize too much about it. I don't want anyone looking at my photos and drawing the simple conclusion that humanity is bad. If someone did that, the photo would not touch the deeper layer of the mind. "

Puzzle

When asked if his photos are in some way healing, Roger Ballen explains: “If people understand themselves better and integrate their understanding without any suppression, it can be harmonizing. It is not easy and our society does not help you in that process. And I do not refer exclusively to Western society, but to the entire human culture. The Ballenesque theater, if I may call it that, shows the absurd theater of humanity."

Did other photographers inspire and influence him? Ballen is very clear about this. “I look at other photographers as little as possible. My own photos influence me. It may sound arrogant, but it isn't. It is the way I interpret my own experience. My own photos have been the biggest influence on my work since the last thirty years. They feed me to understand my own life. For me the word enigma is the most applicable to my work. I don't tell stories about reality, because nobody knows what reality is.”

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All images courtesy Alex Daniels-Reflex Gallery, Amsterdam.

www.rogerballen.com‍

Book: RogerBallen, Ballenesque: a retrospective, 2017, Thames & Hudson

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