Ballen, born in New York in 1950, has lived and worked in Johannesburg for more than 30 years. Ballen worked as a geologist and mining consultant before starting his career as a photographer by documenting the small villages of rural South Africa and their isolated inhabitants.

Ballen has received numerous photographic awards and has exhibited world wide. His photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

For five years, the focus of Roger Ballen’s photographic work has been a strange and alluring place near Johannesburg he calls the Boarding House. “These photographs are like images from a waking dream, compelling and thought-provoking, formally sophisticated and filled with layers of rich detail, flashes of dark humour, and an altered sense of place. Blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and art, his work is both a powerful social statement and a complex psychological study.” Boarding House.