Roger Ballan

Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal- Monash Gallery of Art

Roger Ballen’s exhibition Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal is showing at the Monash Gallery of Art from 4 September until 1 November. The photography ranges from work made in 1983 to 2007. His work is described as unsettling, beautiful, tender and often brutal. Shaune Lakin, Director of the MGA states "Roger Ballen is one of the world's most important photographers. As with all great
works of art, Ballen's photographs are at once beautiful and challenging: they raise serious questions about ethics and social responsibility, class and race. This is a rare opportunity to see some of the most powerful images produced in our lifetime."

Ballen’s photographs document his experience of South African fringe dwellers. Ballan was trained as a geologist and taught himself photography as a hobby. He began to photograph the houses and people he met while looking for potential mining sites in the 1970’s. He travelled to some of the poorest areas where he saw the lonely, isolated characters of the area, which people in the cities chose to ignore. Ballan’s work explores the ‘depth and nuances of …what it means to be a human animal, driven by a range of fitful and barely understood forces’. It moves from documenting the world outside to an imaginary world within.

I thought some Ballan’s work was quite confronting especially the second room. I found it difficult to understand most of his later works in the second room as they were very unusual. The lady who spoke to us said something that I thought was very true however, ‘art is not always about beauty’. I think this was a great point as most people believe art is meant to be a beautiful but sometimes art needs to be shocking to grab people’s attention and make them notice what’s going on in the world.

All of his works seem very bleak, with the message not obvious at first -or that is what I thought. Some of his works included 'man shaving on verandah', Western Transvaal, 1986, and 'Dresie and Casie, twins', Western Transvaal, 1993. 'Man shaving on verandah' showed a old, poor, starving man sitting on the steps of an old building with rubbish scattered around him. When I saw this you could obviously see that he was trying to show how these people live in the dorps but it was hard to tell if there was another meaning behind it. 'Dresie and Casie' was a photo that disturbed many people. Most didn’t like it and didn’t want to look at it. I didn't find it that disturbing because I didn't really understand it.

I liked part of this exhibition, the first room as I was able to understand it more. The second room I didn’t like because the photos were a lot more unusual and some of the subject matter was really creep. Overall, I thought this exhibition was pretty good considering some of the works were a bit disturbing.