Photos from Rural SA

Sergeant F de Bruin, Department of Prisons employee, Orange Free State, 1992

Have you seen these guys in Transvaal?

Photographer Roger Ballen took this photo of Dresie and Casie, a twin brother from West Transvaal, as featured in his book: Platteland: Images from Rural S. Africa.

(Thank goodness it is now called North-West!)

Outland' is both a retrospective of the earlier photographs Roger Ballen published in his photo-essays 'Dorps' (1986) and 'Platteland' (1995), as well as a survey of the new directions his work has taken since then. The AVA show thus surveys the entire body of Ballen's South African work, and traces his evolution from a documentary realist to a subjective fantasist.

Ballen's first images from 'Dorps' portray fragmented vistas of poor Platteland homes. These are seductively beautiful photographs - tender, lyrical and reverential - in which even the humblest object is invested with a homely poetry. With 'Platteland', Ballen first staked out his own particular aesthetic terrain. Although he continues to produce captivating images of children, and affectionate studies of baby domestic animals, he is most closely associated with portraits of a peculiarly disturbing and macabre