Roger Ballen’s new rat-human character: a gothic allegory in immaculately composed photographs

Over the past 35 years, Johannesburg-based American photographer and painter Roger Ballen (born 1950) has developed a distinctively dark and eerie style―characterized by a simple square format and stark black and white―to create images of the South African social landscape and portraits of surreal vignettes.

In his latest volume Ballen expands on his longstanding predilection for unsettling interiors and spooky characters. Roger the Rat follows the life of a creature whose body is human but whose head is that of a rat. Ballen’s rat character interacts with mannequins, people and various objects in often cramped and oppressive rooms, in ways that defy explanation but seem at once humorous and sinister. This book gathers the series, made between 2015 and 2020.