English: On Monday November 9, 2009 The School of Visual Arts in New York City hosted a conversation between Roger Ballen and Darius Himes.

Here is part of Darius Himes's Introduction to Roger Ballen:

“From any objective viewpoint, Roger Ballen operates as a one-man school of photography. For more than two decades, he has developed a style of image-making that is firmly rooted in the documentary tradition of the great mid-century storytellers, but which has consistently taken the notion of a photographic “document” as a mere starting point for an ever-deepening exploration into the human subconscious.

Roger Ballen grew up in New York under the familial influence of the Magnum clique of photographers; his mother ran the New York office of the famous agency for many years when he was a child, and young Roger considered Henri, Bruce, and Elliott as so many uncles and tutors. He left the City behind—and the safety of that world—immediately after university, spending 5 years on the road, traveling to such far-flung places as Istanbul and Papua New Guinea. Eventually he settled in South Africa and found work according to his formal training, as a geologist. His travels to the back-country of that country, and in particular around Johannesburg, provided occasion for a continued sustained photographic exploration, which his first two published books of photographs bear out. #REDIRECT ...More