Manchester - Roger Ballen Exhibition

Shadow Land: Photographs by Roger Ballen 1983-2011
Shadow Land is a major exhibition of work by internationally-acclaimed photographer Roger Ballen whose work offers a powerful social critique and an extreme, uncanny beauty. The exhibition explores three decades of Ballen’s career, charting the evolution of his unique photographic style and demonstrating the contribution he has made to contemporary photography.

Having never heard of Roger Ballen before or seen any of his work, this exhibiton showing a variety of his works and projects was a good opportunity to be introduced to his images. A series that I liked and found to be memorable was the 'Uncanny Animals' images, taken in South Africa, which showed and looked at the relationship between humans and animals and how the animals can take over and adapt to human habitats

As a cat lover I was drawn to the images with cats in (especially this last one, how beautiful!) love the first one too, the shape of the cat creeping in at the edge after the bunny is awesome, such good timing. A lot of the images showing empty spaces like this had an abstract, graphic quality to them, looking as if the strong black outlines were black scribbles on a textured background. 

This was probably my favourite image from the exhibition. It was (rightly) a large print, on a wall not taken up by many other photographs which reinforced the strength and impact of the image. I love the peaceful feel of the girl asleep with the cat lurking on top, contrasting with the chaos of the textured wall and the image of presumably older generations watching her. I really wanted to find a poster or postcard of this in the gift shop however there wasn't anything there - would have loved this on my wall.

I'm a massive lover of cats in photographs, placed in either ordinary, relaxing, or unexpected and contrasting situations, I can't help but feel the addition of a cat can make a photograph ten times better! (in my opinion anyway). This has inspired me to maybe start up my own project looking at this, giving me an excuse to create my own photographs with such additions.