Roger Ballen: Shadow Land. Photographs (1982–2013)

In Atlas Sztuki we present a selection of photographs that were created during Roger Ballen's more than thirty years of activity in South Africa. Roger Ballen was born in New York City in 1950 and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in psychology in 1972 and the Colorado School of Mines in Golden in geology, where he received his PhD in Earth Sciences a few years later, leaving for South Africa to work as a geologist in 1982. The work of a geologist allowed him to reach rarely visited corners of the country, and documenting more discovered places allowed him to develop a passion for photography. A passion, the development of which was undoubtedly influenced by the artist's mother, who is a photo editor and publisher at the legendary Magnum Photos agency in New York. Before Ballen left for South Africa, he photographed in the 1970s in the United States of protesters against the Vietnam War and everything he found interesting during numerous trips around the world during his studies. 
Ballen published his first explorations of the South African province in 1986 in an album entitled Dorps. Subsequent years of photographic activity, during which the artist moved away from reportage photos strongly influenced by the Magnum Photos aesthetics, developing his unique artistic visions, resulted in further albums, among which should be mentioned Platteland (1994), Outland (2001), Shadow Chamber (2005), Boarding House (2009) and Asylum of the Birds (2014). Asylum of the Birds Is the artist's latest project, which has released 12 albums so far.
At the exhibition in Atlas Sztuki we show a rich selection of works from the above-mentioned six albums of the artist. The selection of works reflects the statement of prof. Robert J.C. Young that "Ballen's photographs over the years gradually became more and more unrealistic and painterly, moving away from the documentation of life in remote agricultural South Africa, until they became as if taken out of the nightmares of Freud's Ratman". We also present the artist's latest video entitled Asylum of the Birds. The artist has recently been fascinated by birds and when asked what music he has been listening to lately, he replies that the sounds made by birds.
The curator of the exhibition at Atlas Sztuki is Peggy Sue Amison. Roger Ballen's exhibition at Atlas Sztuki is the second project in our exhibition space by Peggy Sue Amison, currently the head of the East Wings project in Dubai, who has been the artistic director of the Sirius Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland, for the last years. Peggy Sue Amison presented Ballen's work last year during the Belfast Photo Festival.
In the catalogue, we publish two texts on the work of Roger Ballen. The author of the first is a photography expert Dr. Adam Mazur, the second was written by the British Robert J.C. Young is a professor at New York University. The whole is completed by a conversation between Peggy Sue Amison and Roger Ballen. I strongly encourage you to read all the texts.