Shadow Chamber

Roger Ballen (b.1950) challenges the ways in which we perceive the ‘reality’ of photography. His striking, ambiguous images of people, animals and objects posed in mysterious, cell-like rooms occupy the grey area between fact and fiction, blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and art forms such as painting, theatre and sculpture. This most recent body of work, made between 2000 and 2004, is a product of the decades Ballen has spent working with and photographing people on the fringes of South African society.