Roger Ballen is an American photographer whose dark, eerie images of the South African social landscape have captured international attention. Often focusing on the downtrodden and underprivileged residents of rural Afrikaner villages, his work features abrupt juxtapositions between people and their environment in stark, black-and-white compositions. His practice is often described as painterly, and he has cited Joan Miró as an influence. “When somebody looks at something as wire-ly as, say, a Miró painting, this issue is never ‘what is this about?’ It’s just seen as an abstract line,” Ballen has remarked. “In photography, since the basis of photography is ‘capturing reality,’ people always want to know what the meaning of the wires is. In ...