Renowned photographer Roger Ballen has released his first color photography monograph, "Spirits and Spaces," marking a significant departure from his exclusively black-and-white work. The book, published by Thames & Hudson in September 2025, showcases Ballen's exploration into color photography after receiving a Leica SL camera as a gift in 2016.

Anchored in the chaotic and absurd psychological space of the "Ballenesque," "Spirits and Spaces" reveals Ballen's creative vision in color for the first time. The transition to color photography inspired Ballen to reexamine the relationships between his images and elements of light, depth, texture, and form. The collection eloquently captures Ballen's bizarre world, where animals and Art Brut-like drawings dominate, and humanity is reduced to obscure figures or fragmented body parts.

The new color images featured in "Spirits and Spaces" were created in collaboration with Ballen's artistic director, Marguerite Rossouw. These photographs were produced in a claustrophobic space constructed from worn, wallpapered wooden panels with minimal lighting. In this dense and oppressive environment, Ballen creates what many might perceive as a world inexplicable through words – a realm where absurdity, chaos, comedy, and tragedy seem to coexist side by side.

Gerhard Clausing from Photo Book Journal commented on Ballen's work, stating: "Ballen pushes us to confront what most photographic traditions tend to avoid: disorder, the irrational, the strange. Yet, within these bewildering spaces also lies surprising tenderness. Many compositions, though grotesque at first glance, unfold into meditations on fragility, vulnerability, and the persistence of creativity amid chaos. In this sense, 'Spirits and Spaces' speaks to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of fractured environments and fractured selves."

The monograph comprises 91 images divided into six thematic chapters: Childhood, Spectre, Animus, Shadow, Libido, and Chaos. Each chapter explores different psychological and emotional territories through Ballen's distinctive visual language. The book is available for purchase on Thames & Hudson's website at https://www.thamesandhudson.com/products/roger-ballen-spirits-and-spaces.

Lily Kroeger from Musee Magazine praised the publication, writing: "Ultimately, 'Spirits and Spaces' confirms Ballen's status as one of the most distinctive photographic voices of our time. By embracing color, he has not abandoned the Ballenesque but pushed it further, creating a theater where spirits, animals, and memories collide in spaces as disturbing as they are unforgettable."

Ballen provided insights into each chapter's conceptual framework. Regarding "Childhood," he explained that the raw, primitive style of the drawings invites viewers to reconnect with memories of their childhood, often making him wonder about the identity of the characters and whether they resemble drawings he might have made as a child. The "Spectre" chapter presents glimpses of a world invisible to the eye, depicting realms that exist in the depths or peripheries of consciousness – worlds that have been repressed, expelled, or exiled.

The "Animus" section focuses on animals that permeate Ballen's spaces, appearing everywhere and in places where they hardly belong. As Ballen notes, "One cannot escape the animal. One cannot flee from the animal. The animal is deep within us. We come from the animal." The "Shadow" chapter explores the mysterious shadow that follows us from place to place, remaining always intangible, unfathomable, haunting, troubling, and never easy to explain.

In the "Libido" chapter, Ballen addresses the inescapable nature of libido, describing it as inscribed in the very mechanism of consciousness – a constant of life present from birth that defines our existence on the planet, whether human or animal. Finally, the "Chaos" section represents the conflictual relationship between civilization and nature, where opposites attract and dislocate in a world founded not on logic but on irrationality, where delirium, mirage, dreams, and nightmares coexist and cannot be classified as clear or obscure.