Rosalie Higson | October 09, 2008 ROGER Ballen is a man with two faces. As a geologist, he digs into the African landscape, searching for seams of gold and other mineral deposits deep in the earth. As a photographer, he mines the world of the subconscious to create his unsettling visual mythology of life in rural South Africa. Roger Ballen's Eugene on the Phone, 2000, presents a multi-layered reality in the form of a snapshot. An exhibition of his work, Brutal, Tender, Human, Animal, opens at the National Library of Australia in Canberra next month. Curated by Robert Cook of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, it is a 25-year survey of the internationally famous photographer's output. Ballen's black-and-white images of South African fringe dwellers and their environs have the familiar objects of outsiders everywhere: bare...
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