Roger Ballen, Des oiseaux

PARIS: ATELIER EXB, 2022

I copy-edited and proofread this book by the American photographer Roger Ballen as part of Atelier EXB’s “Des Oiseaux” series of photobooks.

Publisher description: A major figure in the contemporary art scene, Roger Ballen has, for more than forty years, declined the intricacies of his unconscious through the development of stagings that oscillate between dream and reality. His strange works invite the viewer to enter his mind for an extreme journey: the exploration of the recesses of his soul and his secret impulses.

For this thirteenth title in the collection, Ballen has made a selection of photographs, for the most part unpublished, especially for the book. In closed universes, where graffiti, signs, shadows and fragments accumulate, stories are played out that jostle our gaze. The boundary between fantasy and drama is blurred. The non-logical world of a mischievous and sometimes not-so-kind Alice in Wonderland seems to come to life before our eyes. Birds wisely posed among a doll's decor, emerging behind a wall of pasteboard, evolving in the middle of abandoned toys and broken by a dissatisfied child, or even balancing on balloons, teaming up with teddy bears, real or drawn: all participate in the amused delirium of the artist.