Roger Ballen
Click to EnlargeLot number: 23
Details: Wall above the bed, Dordrecht
Photograph
40 x 40 cm
15.7 x 15.7 in
This work is number 12 from an edition of 35
Executed in 1984
Provenance: Donated by the Artist
Estimate: £2,000 - £3,000*
Artist biography:
Born in New York in 1950 Ballen, a New York native, has been living in Johannesburg, South Africa since 1974. Trained as a geologist, Ballen has been photographing for over 25 years, mostly in remote areas outside of Johannesburg. Working among a population often overlooked and invisible, they face Ballen's camera with both the freshness of children and the faces of hard experience.
Ballen's photographs convey subjects whose characters seem to have sculpted their bodies. However, they also rely upon an exquisitely rigorous formal approach, mixing a draftsman's eye for line and detail with the documentary photographer's obsession for veracity with universal appeal.
Some of Ballen's most recent exhibitions have been shown at the Aura Gallery in Shanghai and the Gagosian Gallery in New York. His latest awards include the Art Directors Club Award Photography in 2006 and the Selma Blair Witch Project in 2005.