Thursday, November 30, 2017

Jacqueline Martinez Reviews Roger Ballen

In the beginning of Roger Ballen's career, Roger focus on photographing those from his hometown of Boer, in South Africa. Later in his career his photographs appeared more staged than they once were before. His photographs in fact did remain black and white as he drew inspiration of humanist documentary photography. There isn't a narrative within his compositions that would have the viewer believe that there's a social or political change.


In Roger Ballen's earlier series, Platteland: Images From Rural South Africa, Roger focuses on documentary and photojournalism. His focus during this series was to highlight introverted communities of the socially outcasted. This series showed the intimacy between the photographer and the subject. His subjects were "stripped to their essence, are deceptively simple".


Diamond digger and son standing on bed, Western Transvaal, 1987



Children from countryside in city home, Central Transvaal, 1987

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