I have quoted Roger
Ballen extensively in this post. The
quotes are mostly taken from an interview between Roger Ballen and Manik Katyal
for EMAHO magazine.
"Most people in photography are just
documenting what’s out there, you know—taking a picture of a sunset, take a
picture of the Taj Mahal, take a picture of a grandmother. They don’t really
use the camera to get deep inside themselves to reveal things about themselves
that they really aren’t very aware of in any other way. So I think I’m really
quite privileged, in a way, I’m really taking pictures of my interior." Roger Ballan, Taken from an interview with
Manik Katyal for Emaho Magazine
Some friends of my
parents whom we had not seen in over 30 years told me about Roger Ballen last
year. When I initially looked at the images then I found them quite
difficult to relate to although I recognised a grittiness and 'dirtiness' that
I liked. I mention the family friends because they have been on quite a
remarkable journey in life. The couple have embraced something relatively
alien to Western culture - a lot less materialistic than we are accustomed to –
and by that I don’t just mean a rejection of monetary value but rather an
appreciation of existential, unconscious, spiritual, inner landscapes – worlds
of imagination, the inexplicable, the magical.
From what I understand the non-material world and how it interacts with
the material one is something that Ballen is exploring, which is of course
enormously interesting to me.
In her introduction to Asylum of the Birds, Ballen's latest
book, Didi Bozzini says, "Ballen's photographic drama combines
artifice and reality as the inseparable elements and mirror images of a poetic
universe, which is in turn the mental double of the real world".[1]
Ballen's photographs are
a combination of reality and fantasy although those elements may be more
accurately described as Kleinien phantasy[2].
I think they are very much about what drives us, eats us up, frightens us
–things we find difficult to look at in ourselves.[3] They are black and white images showing
people, although less of those in his latest book, place and animals as well as
objects. There are also drawings in the
photographs which Ballen says are essential parts of the image. The work was photographed in a real house, location
undisclosed but somewhere in South-Africa, belonging to real people. Ballen spends a great deal of time adding
elements to this genuine location, creating a theatrical set – a mis-en-scene,
establishing a new reality.
Ballen has stated,
“Black and White is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what
one might refer to as reality. My purpose in taking photographs over the past
forty years has ultimately been about defining myself. It has been
fundamentally a psychological and existential journey.” [4]
The second two sentences in
the above resonate with me in relation to much of what I am learning
about photography – photography is a means of exploring who you are, how you
fit and how you make sense of what it is to be human – how you relate to the
world. By expressing and sharing your
internal world in this way others may recognise something of it and make sense
of their own place. Ballen’s statement
which I have quoted at the beginning of this post, saying that taking pictures
of his interior is a privileged thing to be doing helps me to further understand
what I am aiming for. Although, I see
that he uses others and objects rather than himself to explore that interior
landscape.
The title of the book Asylum of the Birds was conceived early
in his process, which Ballen says took 5 years.
The word asylum is an interesting one in that it means a place of refuge
and a place where mad people are sent.[5] If you place any truth in RD Laings[6]
assertion that people experiencing mental illness are justifiably reacting to
the way our society operates, then finding safety in madness makes perfect
sense. (As someone who suffered from
extreme and debilitating anxiety in the past I can certainly testify to the
fact that my own retreat to that place was about avoiding certain truths in the
world – it was about denial of reality.)
This exploration of our
society and also individual madness is something that preoccupies Ballen:
“He has spent most of
his life documenting the social, economic and cultural impoverishments faced by
his subjects, in a bold and experimental manner, taking us into the dark
recesses of their minds, and in turn revealing to us our own dark sides.”[7]
Ballen seems to be
looking intently at the darker sides of human consciousness and I see an apparent
distrust for Western over-appreciation of all that is material, an exploration
into how our society deprives us of something inherently healthy. He discusses how our lack of connection to
fantasy prevents in us something fundamentally human.
“The satisfaction of
their condition is really repressed, it’s not part of the puzzle, the culture
is very rational, scientific, and not very emotional, I guess emotional is a
bit. Not very. The people are told very early, from childhood, not to believe
in these things, that they’re just fantasy and they shouldn’t pay any attention
to it. So people grow up trying to not be in contact with any other condition,
and also not trying to seek it out. Whereas in a culture like India it’s
absolutely prominent…”[8]
I am reminded by Ballen,
by his work, of a director I mentioned in this blog before, Robert Lepage, who
tries to work in an intuitive, responsive, deeply creative way. This is about making a space within which to
work and allowing ideas to grow and form out of the process rather than starting
with an imposed and structured idea. It
can be a slow process and takes time, patience and commitment. Ballen says, “Well, it’s never— it’s never— I
don’t really— when I take pictures, I don’t really have any ideas. I don’t
really think, ‘what am I going to do? what am I going to take?, you know, I
just do the work. And so it’s a process that takes time, and takes evolution
and, you know, builds on itself basically. So it’s a great producer, it gives
you other things. So it’s very much a dynamic process, rather than one that is
dominated by what I want to do from the very beginning. It evolves at its own
speed, in it’s own right and it’s own way and I can’t… I have no way of predicting where the
picture, where the product, will end up.”[9]
The reason for working
this way is you find the unexpected.
It’s an exciting way to go about things and one that requires enormous
trust and confidence. But of course
deeply rewarding when you find something of what you’d been searching for. Ballen says, “I mean, that’s the thing, you
know—the untouchable, the invisible. I mean once you try—at least, what I’m
trying to do, is trying to make the invisible visible. Well, it’s mysterious to
me, trying to make them a little more concrete, a little bit more evident. So,
yeah, photography helps me explain parts of my psyche, parts of my experience,
helps me concretize these in some way. So, you know, it’s all sorts of parts of
myself there. And that I wasn’t really aware of and you’ve woken up parts of
yourself that you weren’t even aware of. It’s a very gratifying experience.”
Looking through Ballen’s
Asylum of the Birds is disturbing –
where are these people from, who are they, what are all these birds about? There is a celebration of death, of the
darker side of our psyche, of nightmares, of fear. Not in a gratuitous way – I don’t mean Ballen
is trying to scare us; he’s simply sharing those aspects of ourselves which we
have become unaccustomed to looking at in our post modern society. He owes much to the Surrealists but also to
something more tribal, ancient and primeval.
It has been interesting
to look at Ballen’s work more closely and understand what is driving him. He is more than a photographer, incorporating
drawing, installation, mis-en-scene, combining reality with ‘phantasy’[10]
and an enormous dose of himself. For me
this is extremely interesting; how far can I combine my theatre background with
photography. I have used my self in the previous two assignments and
will undoubtedly continue with that as I define and redefine who I am. It is good to look at Ballen’s concepts as it
continues to broaden my understanding of what is possible, of what artists do,
how they choose to work, how they choose to share who they are with the world.
I have over time and
especially lately really begun to understand how personal photography can be;
how it is a fundamental expression of the photographer or artist - what they
choose to shoot, how they choose to shoot it, how they choose to show it, what
order, what context – all of these things are capable of being an exceptionally
powerful expression of who is making those pictures. I think Ballen is a good example of a
tremendously personal and generous artist who is literally showing us his inner
world. What a wonderful thing to be able
to do.
Information taken from:
Asylum of the Birds by Roger Ballen
[1] Asylum of the Birds, Roger Ballen, Thames and Hudson, 2014
[2] In Kleinian theory
unconscious phantasies underlie every mental process and accompany all mental
activity. They are the mental representation of those somatic events in the
body that comprise the instincts, and are physical sensations interpreted as
relationships with objects that cause those sensations. Phantasy is the mental
expression of both libidinal and aggressive impulses and also of defence
mechanisms against those impulses. Much of the therapeutic activity of
psychoanalysis can be described as an attempt to convert unconscious phantasy
into conscious thought.
Freud introduced the concept of unconscious phantasy and
phantasising, which he thought of as a phylogenetically inherited capacity of
the human mind. Klein adopted his idea of unconscious phantasy but broadened it
considerably because her work with children gave her extensive experience of
the wide-ranging content of children's phantasies. She and her successors have
emphasised that phantasies interact reciprocally with experience to form the
developing intellectual and emotional characteristics of the individual;
phantasies are considered to be a basic capacity underlying and shaping
thought, dream, symptoms and patterns of defence. (Taken from http://www.Melanie.Klein.org.uk/theory)
[4] The Photobook – Douglas Stockdale’s blog
[5] Emaho Magazine interview
[6] RD Laing – influential psychiatrist in the 60s who famously stated
that madness was a justifiable response the society in which we live.
[7] Emaho Magazine interview
[8] Emaho Magazine interview
[9] Emaho Magazine interview
[10] See footnote 2
He
has spent most of his life documenting the social, economic and
cultural impoverishments faced by his subjects, in a bold and
experimental manner, taking us into the dark recesses of their minds,
and in turn revealing to us our own dark sides. - See more at:
http://www.emahomagazine.com/2014/10/roger-ballen-maybe-i-can-speak-goat-and-i-can-speak-a-little-chicken/#sthash.Vyi17cqq.dpuf
