Pelas galerias - o Festival Off - o programa é extenso, mas refira-se // depois da menção anterior a Daniel Blaufuks em La Caja Negra (com a edição do livro Blaufuks) // apenas Roger Ballen na Max Estrella - ver o site da galeria - com "Shadow Chamber" (Phaidon 2005) e algumas fotos já posteriores
One arm goose, gelatina de plata, 80x80 cm
The chamber of the enigma, gelatina de plata, 40x40 cm
"Nacido en 1950, Roger Ballen ha vivido y trabajado en Johannesburgo, Sudáfrica, durante casi 30 años. Hijo de un editor gráfico de la agencia Magnum, trabajó como geólogo y asesor de minas antes de empezar de forma autodidacta fotografiando pequeños pueblos y habitantes de la Sudáfrica rural.
Sus imágenes son en sí mismas declaraciones de fuerte contenido social y estudios psicológicos perturbadores. Roger Ballen desafía las formas en que percibimos la "realidad" de la fotografía. Sus retratos ambiguos y sorprendentes de personas, animales u objetos posando en habitaciones que asemejan celdas, ocupan el espacio gris entre realidad y ficción, difuminando las fronteras entre la fotografía de reportaje y las formas artísticas como la pintura y la escultura."
En el año 2002 Ballen fue nombrado Fotógrafo del Año por Rencontres d'Arles.
PhotoEspaña, Best Photographic Book of the Year 2001
"World-renowned and award-winning photographer Roger Ballen, who is known for the social comment of his previous publications Dorps, Small Towns of South Africa; Platteland, Images from Rural South Africa and Outland, now explores in Shadow Chamber the underbelly or the ‘shadow chamber’ of existence. He takes major leaps forward into a metaphoric dimension with multiple conscious and subconscious meaning. He does this in an, as yet unseen, and entirely unique way.
With Shadow Chamber he creates a way of seeing that makes an important and historic contribution to art photography.
His photographs are striking, ambiguous images of people, animals and objects posed in mysterious, cell-like rooms that occupy the grey area between fact and fiction, blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and art forms such as painting, theatre and sculpture. The results are completely abstract and not defined by the origins or specific location of the characters he photographs.
Ballen focuses on the interactions between the people, animals and objects that inhabit mysterious rooms – the shadow chamber. The rooms are unsettling and strange: 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. Figures hide away in boxes, crouch behind overstuffed sofas and squat with their shirts pulled over their heads."
outros livros: Cette Afrique lá, Photo Poche, Editions Nathan Paris 1997.
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