South African photography is being celebrated at exhibitions and art fairs around the globe, but there are few spaces within South Africa itself where local audiences can go to appreciate and learn more about the intricacies of the medium. It’s one of the reasons why there is so much excitement around the launch of the forthcoming Roger Ballen Centre for Photography in Forest Town, Johannesburg – and why we just had to get a look inside the space before it even opened, or actually even installed its front doors.
The centre, located across the road from the iconic Four Seasons Hotel and the recently-completed Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, will realise the Roger Ballen Foundation’s 15-year dream to bring a photographic centre to the city. And, as we learnt on a tour through the space with Ballen himself and the architect of this bold structure Jo van Rooyen, the space will also become the new administrative home of the Ballen Office, the artist’s new studio and workshop, as well as the new storage facility for his immense archive of work and collection of artefacts.
‘Ultimately it’s a place where I am doing my own work,’ Roger explains as we walk around the construction site, ‘but more than that, we are really trying to make it a great place to display photographs and to create an environment that will uplift people’s understanding of photography and photography related to other art forms,’ he says.
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