“My images are meant to straddle a strange line, where illusion becomes delusion, fact is fiction, and the conscious merges with the unconscious. Dreams become real, the real becomes a dream, the dead is alive, the alive dead,” says the photographer Roger Ballen, who lives in works in South Africa, in a video accompanying his new book, Ballenesque.
The New York born, South Africa-based photographer Roger Ballen’s breakthrough came when he published “Outland” in 2001. The book made a splash, sold out quickly, and is now being republished by Phaidon. Ballen was already an established photographer when he produced a video I Fink U Freeky for Die Antwoord in 2012. Most recently, his work has been painted onto the backs of leather jackets for the latest Comme des Garcons Homme Plus collection.