Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]
It has to start with myself. I just can’t go out and say, I’m going to help humanity and take greater pictures. That usually doesn’t work.
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I never think about a photo before I start it. I try to let my mind relax, and then when I get there I do it.
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In the end, I believe that the most important influence on my aesthetic has been the photographs I have taken.
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[My] goal as an artist is to create increasingly complex images with greater and greater clarity of form and intensity of vision.
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You need to travel deep inside yourself to create a good picture.
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I don’t have any particular ideas about what I want to do…. I just relax and keep a focused mind and make the photographs.
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The essence of photography is freezing minute periods of time. The mind has to believe that you’ve captured a genuine moment, because that is the purpose of photography.
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Because photography is such an easy medium to master technically, especially with today’s cameras, people don’t realize that it’s not just being able to pick up a camera. When I lift that camera up to take a picture, I’ve gone through thousands of steps to get to that point. That’s what you’re really seeing; it’s a complex view of the world, through my imagination, through my experiences.
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