Renowned photographer Roger Ballen sat down with Amanda Ballen in September 2025 to discuss his extraordinary six-decade career and the development of his unique aesthetic approach known as the "Ballenesque." The comprehensive interview explored the evolution of his artistic vision, from his early documentary work to his current multimedia installations and the establishment of two major art centers in Johannesburg.
The term "Ballenesque" was first coined by Professor Robert Young in his introduction to Ballen's retrospective book of the same name, published by Thames & Hudson in 2016 with a second edition released in 2022. According to Ballen, this distinctive aesthetic resists strict definition but contains several recurring characteristics that have become his artistic signature.
"A Ballenesque image typically conveys a psychologically charged atmosphere," Ballen explained. "Combinations of objects are surreal and there is a visual tension often created from the interplay of opposites: order and chaos, familiarity and strangeness, the rational and the irrational." The settings are most often confined, windowless interiors that appear detached from the outside world, functioning as visual embodiments of the subconscious mind.
The human figures who inhabit these spaces, especially in Ballen's earlier bodies of work, are frequently individuals living on the margins of society. Their gaze is both intimate and inaccessible, provoking a complex and ambivalent emotional response from viewers. These environments are further populated with objects, animals, and hand-drawn marks whose arrangement often appears irrational or arbitrary, yet they mirror the disjunctions and unpredictability of dreams.
When asked about how his photographs open the unconscious mind, Ballen emphasized the importance of disrupting habitual perception. "Normally, our minds want to organize things—make a story, find categories, look for meaning—and my photographs try to destabilize that process," he said. "I think when the usual opposites collapse; real and unreal, truth and fiction, dream and nightmare, order and chaos or civilization and nature, the unconscious starts to show itself."
Ballen advises viewers not to try to solve his pictures but rather to stand before the images and allow the ambiguity to work on them. He points to his Theatre of Apparitions photographs as a prime example, where people see vastly different things—masks, skulls, animals that are half-human and half-beast, cave paintings, or figures from their dreams. The ambiguous forms allow viewers' minds to complete the image for themselves.
While primarily known as a photographer, Ballen has expanded into multimedia artistry, engaging with sculpture, film, etching, painting, and theater. Drawing has become particularly essential to his photographic practice, challenging the very classification of his images as traditional photographs. "Drawing has always been close to my photography," Ballen noted. "At first it showed up indirectly—through wires, cages, and bits of metal that ran like lines through the pictures."
The evolution of drawing in his work progressed from indirect appearances in early pieces to graffiti in "Outland," then to pervasive scrawls and symbols in "Shadow Chamber" and "Boarding House." With "The Theatre of Apparitions," Ballen turned fully to drawing, scratching into glass to create ghostly figures reminiscent of cave walls or dreams. In his recent colored Polaroids, he even applies thick paint directly onto the photographic surface.
This integration of drawing extends photography's possibilities by creating ambiguity around what is real and what is not. The drawings possess a raw, instinctive quality that seems to emerge directly from the unconscious, relating to the psychic automatism of the Surrealists. They can intervene in composition by echoing forms or disrupting them, play with optics by reversing figure and ground, and make photograph surfaces feel more animated.
Animals have played an evolving role throughout Ballen's career, shifting from companions in "Outland" to estranged presences in "Boarding House," and finally to protagonists in "Roger the Rat." "In my early works like Platteland and Outland, animals were part of everyday life—companions that reflected the realities of human existence," Ballen explained. "Later, in Shadow Chamber and Boarding House, they became estranged presences, unsettling figures in claustrophobic, surreal spaces."
Ballen's fascination with animals stems from his academic background, having studied Animal Psychology at university. His first exhibition at his Johannesburg museum, The Inside Out Centre for the Arts, is entitled "End of the Game" and explores the history of wildlife destruction in Africa. "Wherever you look in my work, there are animals—under beds, on chairs, suspended on walls," he said. "You cannot escape them because the animal is deep inside; we come from the animal."
Addressing the common perception that his work is disturbing or dark, Ballen challenges these cultural associations. "The word dark suggests fear, danger, or moral corruption. These associations come from deep cultural binaries; light versus dark, good versus evil, known versus unknown," he observed. "Yet what people often call dark is simply what they do not wish to confront."
Ballen draws inspiration from Carl Jung's concept of the shadow, quoting Jung's famous observation: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." This philosophical approach guides Ballen's work toward confronting what lies beneath the surface of human consciousness.
After working exclusively in black and white for most of his career, Ballen made a decisive shift to color beginning in 2016. This transition occurred when Leica loaned him a Leica SL and zoom lens for the "Ballenesque: Roger Ballen Retrospective Film." To his surprise, many of the color stills proved more compelling than their black-and-white versions.
"What I discovered is that I do not see color as bright pigments but as monochromatic color—muted, tonal, subdued," Ballen explained. His palette contains desaturated hues suggesting bleakness and decay, while sudden bursts of red or green break through with emotive power. The shift from direct flash to LED lighting has intensified this duality, creating atmospheres with greater depth and complexity.
Regarding photography's future in an era of image saturation, Ballen emphasizes discipline and persistence as key factors for artistic success. "We live in a world flooded with images, most of them shallow and forgettable. The only way to rise above this noise is through discipline and persistence," he stated. Ballen maintains a daily photography practice, comparing artistic development to athletic training that requires constant work.
Ballen's vision has extended beyond photography to creating physical environments, most notably the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Johannesburg. Founded through the Roger Ballen Foundation established in 2007, the center opened in 2023 after years of searching for the right location. Working with architect Joe van Rooyen, Ballen conceived the space not simply as a museum but as an artwork itself—a Ballenesque environment reflecting his aesthetic philosophy.
The building appears as a mysterious, Brutalist block that opens into a double-barrel exhibition hall where raw concrete blurs the boundaries between inside and outside. This design echoes the psychological process of turning the unconscious inside out, hence the center's name. The undulating fence, suspended barrel, and interplay of shadow and light all resonate with Ballen's interest in ambiguity and surrealism.
Recently, Ballen has added the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography to the Inside Out Centre in Johannesburg. "I created the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography because South Africa has extraordinary photographic talent, yet very few spaces devoted entirely to the medium," he explained. The center aims to give photography the visibility, support, and recognition it deserves while providing a platform for local photographers often confined to documentary traditions.
By hosting exhibitions, educational programs, and community initiatives, the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography creates a dedicated space where South African voices can be strengthened and projected internationally. Ballen intentionally chose to call it a "Centre" rather than a gallery to signal a place of gathering, exchange, and experimentation where photography is not only displayed but actively lived, discussed, and advanced, potentially shaping the future of photographic arts in South Africa.
