Outland is the culmination of almost twenty years of work for
artist-photographer Roger Ballen and amounts to one of the most
extraordinary photographic documents of the late twentieth century.
Beginning with the small 'dorps' or villages of rural South Africa, the
subject of Ballen's photography moved on in the late 1980s and early
1990s to concentrate on their inhabitants: isolated rural whites,
scarred by history, in the process of losing the privileges of apartheid
which had provided them with livelihoods and sustained their identity
for a generation. The results were shocking, both powerful social
statements and disturbing psychological studies.
Through the late 1990s and into 2000, Ballen's work has progressed
again. Continuing to portray whites on the fringe of South African
society, his subjects begin to act. Where previously his pictures,
however troubling, fell firmly into the category of documentary
photography, his new work moves into the realms of fiction. Ballen's
characters act out dark and discomfiting tableaux, providing images
which are exciting and disturbing in equal measure. One is forced to
wonder whether they are exploited victims, directly colluding in their
own ridicule, or newly empowered and active participants within the
drama of their own representation.
