instruction:
Given a document, find the main entity about whom the author is writing. Write the full name if mentioned in the text. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
question:
After 50 prolific years spent producing masterful black-and-white photographs   Roger Ballen  is ready to take  his  place as a master of the medium.
The past few years have seen major moves from the American-born  South African–based artist.  He  earned  his  own wing of Cape Town's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art  after the Roger Ballen Foundation contributed the largest financial donation from a foundation the brand-new institution has seen yet. Outside of photography   he 's gone from directing Die Antwoord music videos to  his  own short films. With a new retrospective monograph  Ballenesque  out October 10 from Thames & Hudson  Ballen declares for all the world to hear that  he  is an icon.
Ballenesque opens with an essay by historian and cultural critic Robert J.C. Young. In it  Young begins to define the mesmerizing  "instantly recognizable" quality of Ballen's images  which he variously calls "prehensile portraits " "aleatory assemblages " "windowless walls " and "dark junctures of disjunction." When Young introduces these cornerstones of  Ballen 's style  he writes  "We isolate four; you  the viewer of the photograph  may add a fifth to complete the secret."
The rest of the book is a guided tour through  Ballen 's work  complemented by 50 pages of the artist's own anecdotes  autobiography  thoughts on technique  and philosophy. It all starts with blurry family portraits  Ballen  shot with a Mamiya camera  he  bought at 13 years old.  He  shares the first photo  his  that  he  really liked  a picture of a dead cat on the side of the road.
As  he  got older   he  became a documentarian of 60s and 70s counterculture  from grimacing Vietnam War protesters to carefree nudists at Woodstock. Many photos from this period in  his  career are shown for the first time within the pages of Ballenesque. By 1979   Ballen  had begun to travel the world  collecting snapshots of kids from New York to Indonesia that would be collected into a series called Boyhood.
When he moved to South Africa   Ballen  became fixated on the human toll of apartheid.  He  traveled the impoverished South African countryside as a geologist  but photographed the people and places  he  saw along the way.  He  collected these images into the two series that made  him  famous  Platteland and Outland.
Also debuting in the new monograph are Ballen's paintings from the 1970s  which informed  his  abstract photography in Asylum of the Birds and The Theater of Apparitions. "It was exciting to put those paintings in the book "  he  said. Many of the paintings were lost when  his  father cleaned them out of their childhood home  but the ones that survive have been documented for Ballenesque. "I didn't paint for 30 years  but in a way these set the foundation for my later work."
By the end of the text   Ballen 's work seems to exist  like one of his paintings  largely within his own mind. "From about 2002 onward  you rarely see a human face in the photos "  Ballen  said.  His  current project  teased in the final pages  is called Ah Rats. Now the vermin that have infested the edges of  his  work for years are at its center. In January   Ballen  art directed Die Antwoord's video for "Tommy Can't Sleep " which is full of the rats that are on his brain.
 Ballen  still walks Johannesburg looking for places to take pictures for around five hours a day.  He  spends the rest of  his  time with  his  family  administrating the Roger Ballen Foundation  and tending  his  collection of more than 100 pets. "There's rats  snakes  chickens  ducks  lizards  rabbits  spiders  doves  pigeons  crows  mice "  he  rattles off. Around 10 percent have names  including a bird named Icarus and a rat named Stoffel.
Icarus  Stoffel  and  Ballen 's Johannesburg home are far from the roiling American political scene  but  Ballen  has some advice for young artists trying to distinguish themselves in a photographic era he describes as "amorphous" compared to when he cut his teeth.
Ballen is quick to clarify that he doesn't mean photographers should risk physical harm by "jumping the White House fence" to get a unique photograph. "It's years and years and hours and hours later that you're developing an approach. My pictures are powerful because they access the subconscious mind. 'On the line' can mean psychological  as well as physical." Years spent paying attention to places and people others would rather ignore are how  Ballen  put  himself  on the line. As a result   his  photographs of outsiders help the rest of us look inward.
answer:
Roger Ballen's


question:
Newspapers on Tuesday ran pictures of the urbane   U.S.-educated Foreign Minister Javad Zarif  laughing and hugging the commander of the guards  Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari.
 Zarif  brief lawmakers on Wednesday about the expected U.S. action and about Iranâs plans for a response  according to members of parliament quoted in state media.
âIn the closed session  Zarif  emphasized that if the Americans take any steps against the nuclear deal that the Islamic Republic of Iran will give them a more crushing response â Shahbaz Hassanpour  a lawmaker representing the city of Sirjan  told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
Lawmakers did not disclose the specific actions that  Zarif  had discussed as plans for Iranian retaliation.
answer:
Javad Zarif


question:
Photographer Cody Smyth watched his high school friendsâ band The Strokes â with members Julian Casablancas  Nick Valensi  Albert Hammond Jr.  Nikolai Fraiture  and Fab Moretti â go from a regular staple of New York City dive bars to what the music world hailed as the second coming of rock and roll. In this excerpt from his new book  The Strokes: The First Ten Years  he remembers a night he calls âthe last quiet momentâ before everything changed. Included is a gallery of photos Smyth took from the first ten years of The Strokesâ rise to fame.
A lunch brought us together for the first time in 1995. From that point on we were inseparable. I had met our dear friend  Claude Rene  or âGramps â as we all called him then  in an early morning chemistry class. I was habitually late  which Claude found incredibly entertaining. We bonded instantly. Claude knew Julian as they had gone to elementary school together. He knew  Nick  as the kid who was always at the Flats or the Meadow in Central Park with his guitar. Julian and I had some classes together  but didnât talk much beyond some friendly greetings.  Nick  and I had met briefly in the locker room as our lockers were near each other  but that was about it.
One morning in the hall between classes I run into Claude  and we make a plan to meet out in front of school for lunch. Bell rings and I head out to meet him. âWe got two more joining us â he says as  Nick and Jules  approach. âI know you two!â I say. They say the same as it all clicks. We head to 86th and Columbus to the shitty Greek diner we would frequent for many a lunch that year and the remainder of high school  mostly because you could smoke cigs and get fries and a coke for 2 bucks. Nutrition for a teenage boy came cheap. Our waiter was George. We called him âthree fingersâ because he would bring us our water with his fat fingers in the glasses. I remember Julian ripping into him once about it  but it was our spot. We all hung out there most school days. It wasnât long before we met Fab. He and  Nick  were in tenth grade  and although Fab had his own set of friends  we would always see him. He started coming to lunches with us at the diner. This was the beginning of the band.
Between 2000 & 2001  the bar 2A on Ave A and 2nd Street was our home base. If I couldnât get a hold of  Nick  or one of the other guys I would usually head there knowing Iâd find them. Transporterraum recording studio was across the street from the bar  and the guys were holed up with Gordon Raphael down there for a month or two recording Is This It.
answer:

Nick Valensi