Phaidon Press has recently published the second edition of Roger
Ballen’s Outland.
Outland is the
culmination of almost 20 years work for artist-photographer Roger Ballen and
amounts to one of the most extraordinary photographic documents ever published
to date. Ballen’s black and white photographs are powerful psychological
portraits which peer deeply into the human condition and in the margins of the
modern world. Heavy with symbolism, the resulting images are simultaneously
strange, disturbing and unforgettable.
This second edition is an opportunity to view and assess the
work of one of the most prominent photographic artists of the 21st century, in
its entirety, for the first time.
Originally published in 2001 and named Best Photographic
Book of the Year at PhotoEspaña 2001, Madrid, Spain, this second edition is a
new and expanded version featuring 45 previously unpublished pictures from
Ballen’s archive and a new essay by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra
Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The book is introduced by Peter Weiermair, former Director of the Rupertinum
Museum in Salzburg, Austria and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy.
“Like Beckett’s dialogue, Ballen’s photographs are starkly
minimal with anecdotal exposition and narrative detail reduced. In this way
reality is trimmed down, exaggerated and heightened to the degree that it
becomes surreal – sometimes dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish,” says Elisabeth
Sussman.
Ballen has established himself as one of the most
influential and famous photographic artists of the 21st century. He has won
numerous awards including Photographer of the Year at the Recontres d’Arles
(2002) and produced the award-winning music video I Fink You Freeky for South African rap-rave group, Die Antwoord. Outland is an eminent photographic
document depicting individuals on the fringes of Johannesburg. It’s a series of
tableaux vivants portraying the grey spaces in which the subjects of these
photographs interact and exist.
Outland 2nd
Edition by Roger Ballen is published by Phaidon, ISBN 9780714868844 and retails at R750.
NB: Entry forms for The Roger Ballen
Photography Award can be found on the Roger Ballen Foundation website at www.rogerballen.org
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