Roger Ballen – Shadow Land

We visited Manchester Art Gallery recently to view the work of photographer Roger Ballen. Taken from the first paragraph of introduction ‘The photography of Roger Ballen compels, disturbs, repels, The images shift from an aesthetic of evacuated emptiness to a thickened reality that confronts the viewer with its uncanny abject elements, to something altogether bizarre’. The images taken in remote rural South Africa have similar qualities to nightmares, black comedy with everything from living to dead. They are very disturbing. It was a vast space though with many prints on display so you really got a feel for his style and what he was communicating.