Roger Ballen, Culmination, 2007

Roger Ballen’s photographs are like images from a waking dream: compelling and thought-provoking, with layers of rich details, flashes of dark humor, and an altered sense of place. Blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and art, his work is both a powerful social statement and a complex psychological study.

Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950 and lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. His work is represented in museum collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. BOARDING HOUSE is Ballen’s most formally sophisticated work to date. The tableaux have a greater emphasis on drawn and sculptural elements, and the sense of collaboration between the artist and his subjects is increasingly relevant.