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Photography Exhibition at the National Library

Exhibition catalogue for Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal by Roger Ballen.
Exhibition catalogue for Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal by Roger Ballen
National Library of Australia (2008)

Some of the most compelling images in contemporary photography today are now on show in Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal: Roger Ballen Photography at the National Library of Australia.

Ballen, an internationally acclaimed artist, was born in New York but has spent the past 30 years living and working in South Africa. He studied psychology but it was another interest, geology, that he was to make his profession. Working in South Africa’s mining industry took Ballen to the poor rural areas known as ‘dorps’ that were to become his major artistic focus.

This exhibition features Ballen’s images of the people and places of the dorps, pictures that have been described variously as beautiful and brutal, unsettling but always moving, confronting and thought-provoking. Over time, his work has moved from a documentary style to more subjective portraiture, and, in particular, the human condition at its most intense.

And with the confronting nature of his work has come controversy.

Contemporary art curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Dr Robert Cook, who curated the National Library exhibition, said although Ballen’s work deliberately eschewed the sentimental, critics had accused him of denigrating his often poverty-stricken (mostly white) subjects, showing them to be somehow less than human. ‘He was seen as a cruel interloping American who had overstepped the mark of what could and could not be represented in his adopted country,’ Dr Cook said.

But the artist’s work, Dr Cook believes, is much more than ‘just about showing the reality of down-and-out people. It also claims that culture or, more precisely, civilisation is not all it is cracked up to be.

‘These are non-judgemental portraits, based on trust, exchange and friendship,’ he said. ‘Ballen knows his subjects, revisits and re-photographs them on a number of occasions.’

Dr Cook said as a curator of contemporary art, it was easy to ‘get immune to art … to stick things in conceptual boxes’. But then, he added, ‘you come across the work of someone like Roger Ballen—work that confronts you like no other’.

The work of Roger Ballen is in many of the world’s leading cultural institutions, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in France.

Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal: Roger Ballen Photography was first shown at the Art Gallery of Western Australia as part of the FotoFreo Festival in early 2008. The National Library of Australia is the only other Australian venue for this exhibition. Entry is free and visitors to the Library will be able to view Ballen’s work until 29 March.

Roger Ballen will give a special talk about his exhibition at the Library on Tuesday 10 February at 12.30 pm and a public lecture in the National Library Theatre on Wednesday 11 February at 6 pm. Both events are free and bookings can be made on (02) 6262 1271 or at bookings@nla.gov.au

Sally Hopman
Media Liaison Manager, Communications & Marketing