The Greater Manchester Centre for Photography based at the University of Bolton and offers a range of Photography degrees –Photography, Fashion Photography, Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. They offer their students the opportunity to pursue a unique pathway of visual self-discovery. Please find out more here - https://www.photoboltonuni.co.uk

They have kindly offered Redeye members the opportunity to attend this talk, which is part of their ongoing series of guest speakers arranged to support their students.

About Roger Ballen
One of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century, Roger Ballen’s photographs span over forty years.  His strange and extreme works confront the viewer and challenge them to come with him on a journey into their own minds as he explores the deeper recesses of his own.

Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950 but for over 30 years he has lived and worked in South Africa. His work as a geologist took him out into the countryside and led him to take up his camera and explore the hidden world of small South African towns. At first he explored the empty streets in the glare of the midday sun but, once he had made the step of knocking on people’s doors, he discovered a world inside these houses which was to have a profound effect on his work. These interiors with their distinctive collections of objects and the occupants within these closed worlds took his unique vision on a path from social critique to the creation of metaphors for the inner mind. After 1994 he no longer looked to the countryside for his subject matter finding it closer to home in Johannesburg.

Over the past thirty five years his distinctive style of photography has evolved using a simple square format in stark and beautiful black and white. In the earlier works in the exhibition his connection to the tradition of documentary photography is clear but through the 1990s he developed a style he describes as ‘documentary fiction’. After 2000 the people he first discovered and documented living on the margins of South African society increasingly became a cast of actors working with Ballen in the series’ Outland (2000, revised in 2015) and Shadow Chamber (2005) collaborating to create powerful psychodramas.

Booking your place
Please make your booking by 7am on the morning of the event.  We will send you log-in details for the talk no later than 90 minutes before the event start time.