Photography & Illustration: Roger Ballen

Here comes post #2 about artists/photographers who are using drawings/illustrations alongside photography.

The photographs above are from Roger Ballen, an American photographer who has been based in South Africa since the late 1970s. The image on the left is called ‘Room Of The Ninja Turtles’ and is from 2003, the image on the right is from 2002 and is called ‘Crawling Man’.

Roger Ballen often adds different kinds of drawings to his settings before photographing them. While the drawings are often literally done on surfaces, such as walls, he sometimes uses objects like wires or similar (and their shadows) as a means to do a 3D drawing instead. When I saw the image on the top right, the first thing that came to my mind were Francis Bacon’s “cages”.

By including drawings into the picture, he adds an additional layer of texture and meaning to his images.

There is one video interview with him over at Lens Culture, which I found very interesting. It is called ‘Psychology, metaphor and controversy in the art of photography’.
You can find a slideshow with some of his work together with an audio interview here. And another audio interview together with a review about his photobook ‘Boarding House’ here. I ordered ‘Boarding House’ as soon as I saw it and I am looking forward to hold it in my hands!