Paru le 27/10/2005 | Relié sous jaquette 127 pages
Tout public
préface Robert A. Sobieszek
Best known for his striking photographs of people on the fringes of South African society, Roger Ballen makes images that are ambiguous and often disturbing, but also shot through with flashes of dark humour. The photographs in Shadow Chamber blur the boundaries between documentary photography and art forms such as painting, theatre and sculpture, challenging the ways in which we perceive the `reality' of photography. Ballen's images are completely honest, yet also fabricated.
The mysterious, cell-like rooms that Ballen photographs are actual places, but they are unsettling and strange, logical but impossible: their walls are covered with scribbled drawings, stains and dangling wires, the floors are strewn with bizarre props and artefacts. Dogs, rabbits and kittens wander into the frame or are stuffed into unlikely containers. The humans and animals in Ballen's photographs appear isolated and lost, yet strangely empowered at the same time. The resulting images are allegories of lived experiences and surreal takes on human destiny.
Roger Ballen, born in New York City in 1950, has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, for almost thirty years. Ballen worked as a mining consultant and geologist before making his name as a photographer by documenting the small `dorps' or villages of rural South Africa and their isolated inhabitants. His images are disturbing psychological studies as well as powerful social statements. Ballen's previous book Outland (Phaidon, 2001) was named Best Photographic Book of the Year at the PhotoEspaña festival in Madrid in 2001.
Robert A. Sobieszek (1943-2005) was Curator of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before moving to Los Angeles in 1990, he served in various curatorial positions and as Director of Photographic Collections at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. He organized over fifty exhibitions and authored ten books, including LACMA's Robert Smithson: Photo Works and The Camera I: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection.
