As a student at Berkeley, Ballen captured the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. He photographed "Woodstock" in the summer of 1969, producing a series of photographs that were only published recently in the "New York Times", on the 50th university of the revolutionary music festival. In his first publication, "Boyhood" (1979) Ballen presented a series of photographs of boys (chosen from 15000 images), shot during his four-year quest across the continents of Europe, Asia, Central and North America. The book captures archetypes of this universal brotherhood (from Nepal, to Indonesia, Israel to America): "their adventures, games, dreams and mischief."