ROGER BALLEN: Spirits and Spaces. Introduction by Colin Rhodes. With 91 illustrations

145pp., colour illus., hardback, Thames & Hudson, London, 2025 

ISBN: 9780500028926

The colour images in Spirits and Spaces, created in conjunction with Roger Ballen’s artistic director, Marguerite Rossouw, were produced in a claustrophobic space with minimalistic lighting. In this oppressive environment, Ballen creates a world where animals and art brut–like drawings dominate, and humanity is reduced to obscure figures or fragmented body parts.

"As always, one has to take a very deep dive into people’s psyche, including one’s own, to understand the art of Roger Ballen. His latest publication, Spirits and Spaces, continues his exploration of the human psyche and the ambiguous terrain in which dreams, nightmares, and realities intersect. Ballen has always been a master at presenting universes that are simultaneously intimate and unsettling, and this volume continues his lifelong commitment to probing the edges of visual and psychological experience, with color added as a further dimension for consideration ... His spaces are psychological chambers that confront the viewer with archetypes. They can speak to you in many different ways if you let them guide you ... [it's] a theater of the absurd, stripped of artifice ... Spirits and Spaces reaffirms Roger Ballen as one of the most uncompromising and original voices in contemporary photography. This photobook does not comfort; it confronts. By inviting us to immerse ourselves in these ambiguous, spirit-filled environments, Ballen challenges us to expand our sense of what photographic images can evoke." Gerhard Clausing, PBJ Editorial Consultant and Editor Emeritus

Art photographer Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950 and has lived and worked in South Africa since 1982. His previous books include Asylum of the Birds, The Theatre of Apparitions, Roger the Rat and Ballenesque: Roger Ballen: A Retrospective.

Colin Rhodes is the author of Primitivism and Modern Art; Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives and The World According to Roger Ballen. He is currently Distinguished Professor, Xiaoxiang Scholar, and Yangtze River Scholar in the Fine Arts Academy, Hunan Normal University, China.