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Indepth Arts News:
"Portraits as Still Lifes: the Photographs of Roger Ballen"
2001-06-16 until 2001-08-24
Hasselblad Center
Göteborg, ,
SE
This anthology of the photographs of
Roger Ballen explores the whole spectrum
of his work over a period of almost twenty
years, ranging from the unpopulated interiors
of the small dorp towns of South Africa,
reminiscent of Walker Evans, to a selection
of frontal portraits from the Platteland
series and the disturbing, demonical, self-
enclosed tableaux vivants of recent years.
They are photo installations positioned in
the grey area between fact and fiction.
In the most recent pictures, they appear as
condensed radical still-lives in which Ballen
fuses bodies and objects together, creating
a heightened sense of alienation and the
grotesque.
Ballens protagonists are social outsiders. Unbelted by beauty, they, like their surroundings, often exhibit visible traces of
decay and the passage of time. They are
characters in the artists mini-dramas, in
which objects and animals have a role to
play as well. Ballen is no critical social
documentarian, no voyeur of poverty and
ugliness; he observes his fellow players in
the human comedy rather like a painter - in the manner of a Lucian Freud for example
- awed and fascinated by the human body
in whatever form it appears and by the
profundity of the banal.
The intriguing mystery of these photos,
their tendency to linger so long in our
minds, is a function of the fact that we perceive their reality as authentic, something
the medium of photography apparently
guarantees, although its truth actually
evades us. Samuel Becketts plays could be
seen as their literary companion-animals
can stand as symbols of innocence and
beauty in Beckett as well. Yet desolation,
banality and ugliness are raised to another,
higher level through the pathos of the presentation. Unlike Diane Arbus, with whose
work this dark, disturbing photography
appears to share a great deal, Ballen adds
the dimension of play, through which his
protagonists are redeemed.
Photographic images of wall assemblages,
reminiscent of still-lives, are another
persistent theme. The early arrangements:
photos, newspaper clippings, wall hangings
and pious aphorisms in the Dorps and
Platteland collections (from which the
photographs preceding this introduction
are selected) provide clues to the origins of
the people he portrays. As Ballen explains
in his introduction to Dorps: Various items,
reflections on a persons life, are collected
and hang on a wall. I was not necessarily
interested in homes that were saturated
with what is known as kitsch. Alternatively
I sought to capture highly personal expressive taste and experience in the choice and
arrangement of decorative objects.
Ballens more recent photographs, which
account for the majority of the pictures
shown here, are not reportage-style social
documentaries. They are staged scenes in
which the absurdity and alienation of the
situations are intensified. What holds our
attention is not the specific nature of the
lives of these South Africans, but the compelling drama provided by the characters
themselves.
In fact, his use of direct flash intensifies the
sense of doom, dread and disturbance and
the subjects appear to be trapped, incapable of shaping forces of any kind. Subject
and shadow are often frozen and glued
together in a harsh and direct manner. The
subject is unable to escape his destiny, his
fears and anxieties. The mask is stripped,
an animalistic man surfaces. There is no
hiding in Ballens pictures.
The wires in the spatial installations appear
to suggest that the human figures are
puppets. They heighten the impression of
the theatrical, of a theatre of the absurd.
Amidst the detritus of civilisation are the
visibly recognisable victims of social
collapse. The people-the injured and the
Humiliated - stand as metaphors for a
world in hopeless decline.
Roger Ballen is a narrator with the camera.
Yet he no longer attempts to be objective
or representational. He does not attempt to
record meaning, but to generate it. The
images seek inherent complexities, ambiguities and ironies, and the layering one is
accustomed to finding in other art forms.
Ballen is not concerned with documenting
the decline of colonialist ideas of supremacy or with depicting the fate of a marginalized minority in a society that has outlived
itself. His figures are protagonists in an
existential drama. Ballen is a chronicler of
decline and dissolution, an artist who
commands a broad emotional spectrum in
which horror, revulsion and guilt have their
place alongside empathy, humour and wit.
Only thus can he help us enter the hidden
territory, the dark zones of life. The quality
of the photographs derives from the fact
they are universally applicable. Their
origins in the game of showing and seeing
involving model and photographer are
irrelevant. It is their archetypal character
that touches our subconscious and determines their quality
Peter Weiermair
Rupertinum Museum fuer moderne und
zeitgenossische Kunst, Salzburg
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