Dorps: The Small Towns of South Africa
ROGER BALLEN, born in New York City in 1950, has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, for more than 30 years. He worked as a geologist and mining consultant before making his name as a photographer by documenting the small 'dorps' or towns of rural South Africa and their isolated inhabitants. Since DORPS was first published in 1986, Roger Ballen has produced a number of notable books, includingPlatteland: Images from Rural South Africa,(1994),Outland(2000),Shadow Chamber(2005), andBoarding House(2009). Ballen regularly shows his work in galleries around the world, and his photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Tate, London and the Iziko National Gallery in Cape Town.