Amateur Photographer Magazine

Boarding House - Book review

Thursday 2nd July 2009

Title: Boarding House

Author: Roger Ballen

ISBN: 978-07148-4952-2

Publisher: Phaildon Press

Edition: Hardback

For five years, the New York-born, South Africa-based photographer Roger Ballen grew increasingly drawn to a strange boarding house near Johannesburg, where he lives.

It has been home to transients, poor workers, criminals, witchdoctors, children and a host of animals, all of whom have in some way left their mark on the place.

Dilapidated, stained, decorated with mysterious drawings, the hovel and its transient nature fascinated Ballen.

At first intimidated and confused by this collection of images, they're slowly growing on me.

The monochrome, the bare furnishings of an elementary existence and David Lynch-like dreamy atmosphere really do evoke the isolation of this place, and from the strange drawings on the walls you get a sense of the prior inhabitants (most likely children) who left their mark.

Boarding House is an interesting blend of reportage and other forms of art that will certainly be polarising in its appeal, but is undoubtedly one of the more unusual documentary projects we've seen recently. And from a technical standpoint alone, the tones and textures Ballen has captured are stunning in their own right.

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