Woke
This essay was commisoned for a second volume of a projected trilogy of Roger Ballen’s Polaroid-like one minute photographs, here mostly Instax Fujifilm. We immediately recognize that we have journeyed into his “Ballensque” territory. But the artist’s visual report here is very different from what has become familiar from his well known work: square format, sharp, black and white with sharp detail, all taking place in world that is often disquieting to us.
Ballen has been making and publishing images for 40 years, but it was his book Outland in 2000 that brought him more fully into the public eye. His reputation was made on imaginative captures of people and animals in unexpected environments. All of it seemed more than odd. Ballen prefers to call this “shadowy” as opposed to “dark”. The work was always thoughtful and expertly imagined and managed.
Slow. Careful. Bent.
The challenge was to throw off the shackles of judgment: reject cynicism and entitlement and our disdain for the unfamiliar, our elitism (racism and classism).
These newer works seem like stills from the movie in Ballen’s head as he moves thorough these environments where he seems so unguarded, even delighted. He is at ease at the very least. This feels like a spiritual home.
The image presented is what he sees, or what he quickly assembles to see, as if to wonder out loud “what if”. What if I move this into the frame or put these disparate things together and photograph that? These seem like “found” places although upon reflection this seems unlikely.
The artist approaches this art making like Andre Breton seeking “the systematic derangement of the all the senses” in his 1924 manifesto La Revolution Surrealiste. The art, the pleasure, is in our confusion or befuddlement. This is what flashes before Ballen and us in his waking dream.
In his introduction to The Shadow Chamber, curator Robert Sobieszek offers that “to discern fact from fiction in this work may be simply impossible; to tell acting from real life may also be; to bother with such discernment may not be only futile but missing the point.”
Exactly. You’re a guest here. Pay attention.
It is revealing of something that the works are color, or rather in color. This is color film. There is some bold red but not very much. Mostly it is somber - blacks, whites, grays and brown, all parts of Ballen’s shadow alluded to above. Also the rectangular format, as opposed to square, supports the restlessness in the work. These images are closer to a reportage rather than formal portraiture or still life. They are fully considered but seem less composed.
There is very little depth or dimension in these images as if the subject matter already rests on a wall or shelf or in a corner. There are no actual people either, although there are some heads, some limbs, and, notably, hands that seem to beckon or guide us onwards. We can only marvel at the origin and intention of the crudely drawn faces. Specters and spectators, perhaps.
Ballen doesn’t seem to want to shock us, perhaps just to provoke a bit, to urge us to be sharp, to see.