This photograph comes from a series by South African photographer Roger Ballen called ‘Outland’. In the late 1980s Ballen started documenting isolated white rural communities in South Africa who were in the process of losing the privileges of apartheid that had provided their livelihoods and sustained their identity. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the work shifted and Ballen’s subjects started to act out tableaux for the camera, creating images that are intriguing and disturbing in equal measure. These photographs, which appear to aestheticise scenes of poverty, disrupt a documentary reading of the image and provoke the viewer to consider the role of the sitter: exploited victim or consensual participant?
Physical description
Black and white photograph of a detail of a wall, on which a bundle of wire, a computer cable and a child's drawing of a horse are hanging. The wall is also covered in child's graffiti and drawings, including 'I love tess and monique'.
Place of Origin
South Africa (made)
Date
2000 (made)
Artist/maker
Ballen, Roger, born 1950 (photographer)
Materials and Techniques
Gelatin-silver print
Marks and inscriptions
'I love tess and monique'
Dimensions
Height: 63.5 cm approximately, Width: 63.5 cm approximately
Descriptive line
Photograph from 'Outland' series by Roger Ballen, South Africa, 2000.
Exhibition History
Something that I'll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A (Cartwright Hall, Bradford 24/01/2009-19/03/2009)
Something that I'll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A (Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry 16/09/2008-11/01/2009)
Something that I'll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A (Hatton Gallery, Newcastle 27/06/2008-21/08/2008)
Something that I'll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A (Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery 03/05/2008-15/06/2008)
Something that I'll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A (artsdepot, Finchley, London 24/01/2008-31/03/2008)
Something that I'll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A (Sainsbury Centre, Norwich 01/05/2007-24/06/2007)
Stepping In & Out Contemporary Documentary Photogaphy (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Labels and date
In 1982, Roger Ballen began photographing the homes and people of small-town South Africa. Ballen's first photographs were strongly led by his desire to define an aspect of South African culture. This reflected his position as a newcomer, stepping into a marginalised community, foregrounding the socio-economic position that his subjects held. But in city photographs shown here, Ballen has moved further and further from attempting to document a culture. His photographs are powerful and complex because of this extreme aesthetic contemplation of a subject that we assume to be worthy of visualisation purely for its social meaning. Ballen's recent photographs suggest a passion for texture and composition. The starting point for the construction of an image could as easily be a dot on the wall, a dog's tail, or the teeth of the subject.
"The purpose of photography has changed for me. I am no longer an outsider trying to pick up interesting details of a place. Right now, I'm only looking at one place - the interior of my mind. And from that, I step outside."
This bathroom interior is not what it might, at first glance, simply appear to be. It is in fact one of several different constructed sets for a 'Glamour Studio' used in the pornography industry. Each themed set is the stage for a potential sexual fantasy. Bridget Smith's work often deals with spaces that are intended for some kind of performance, from cinemas to sound studios. These spaces are strangely redundant for most of the time, seemingly poised, awaiting an event to take place to make sense of them. [2008-2009]
Subjects depicted
Horses; South Africa; Childhood; Poverty; Walls; Graffiti; Drawings; Cables
Categories
Africa; Photographs
Collection code
PDP
