Roger Ballen: Why Good Photography Should Get Underneath Our Skin and Assault Us

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now.

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Roger Ballen, author of Boyhood.

Roger Ballen is one of the most important photographers of his generation. He was born in New York in 1950 but has been living and working in South Africa for over 30 years. Over the past 50 years his distinctive style of photography has evolved using a simple square format in stark and beautiful black and white. In his earlier works his connection to the tradition of documentary photography is clear but through the 1990s he developed a style he describes as “Ballenesque”. Over the past two decades, Ballen has employed drawings, painting, collage and sculptural techniques to create enigmatic, mysterious sets for his images. Roger Ballen has invented a new hybrid aesthetic in these works but one still rooted firmly in photography.