Room of the Ninja Turtles, R. Ballen 2003

Photography is eternally in question. From the very first image the "truth" of the world was revealed by the camera, it cannot have been otherwise since the lens saw only what was present and the film faithfully recorded what the lens saw. In the 1930s we saw the "documentary photograph" label appear, and photography became a record of social reality, where the plight of rural farmers or urban working children was exposed for all to see and to remedy. Except that despite 150 years of discussion, photography insists on being something other than a mechanical representation of the world. Art (or as some purists would have it, "the lie") keeps creeping in. From the first double exposure, the first selection of photographic subject, the first retouching of a negative, photography has been more about telling a story than recording the truth. Roger Ballen was born in New York City in 1950, and in the late '60s began photographing the protests to the Vietnam war. In the '70s he traveled the world and his street photography became his first book "Boyhood". After graduating with a PhD from the Colorado school of Mines in 1981, he settled in South Africa to work in the mining industry. While prospecting in the countryside he began photographing the rural villages or "Dorfs", and especially the poor and marginal white population that was being left behind in the changes that were happening in that country. In 1986 he published the book "Dorfs", then in 1994 he published "Platteland" which also dealt with the same subjects. In 2001 Ballen published "Outland" and this book, "Shadow Chamber" was published last year by Phaidon Press.

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