Harnessed Dove, R. Ballen 2000 Excited Man, R. Ballen 2001

The photographs in this current book are different, there is no doubt that they are conceptual and perhaps not documentary. At least I hope they are of no place on earth that I might have to live. The images are square format and black and white. They all seem to be taken in the same room, but closer examination reveals that they are taken in every room, and all rooms are the same. There are scribbles on the wall, tables, chairs, boxes, mattresses, masks, barbed wire, rope, animals and people. It all seems meaningless, but each photo has a title so we look for the meaning. It's what we do. Documentary photos carry a caption so that we know how to react to them, the caption tells us what we should think about the image, but what do we make of "harnessed dove" or "scurrying mouse"? What meaning are we to take from "excited man" and haven't we seen him before? Is this the same room or are they actually different? Is this some sort of insane asylum? We can't read the symbology of the images but there seems to be some. The scribbles on the wall certainly seem to be related to the subject matter. Are these strange items, the ball and chain, the barbed wire, the strings, some of which occur in Ballen's previous work, some sort of meaningful sign or are they simply things pulled from a big box of props and thrown around the set? In his career, Ballen may have started in documentary photography but over the years a story has crept in, he has gone from the "decisive moment" to "a slice of life"... some life, perhaps not our life but there is a larger story out there than what we're seeing in the shot.

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