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For the first time in Portugal, Roger Ballen’s photography is exhibited in Porto

The CPF – Portuguese Centre for Photography hosts, from July 10 to October 10, 2021, the exhibition Roger Ballen – My Mind is a Cage, specially designed by the photographer together with the curator Ângela Ferreira and in partnership with TE, to be presented in the premises of the Old Prison and Court of Appeal in the city of Porto.

The photographer tells that he had long wanted to present his work in that building. The result is an unprecedented exhibition in Portugal that covers the author’s main series, created between 1980 and 2020, and which shows some iconographic images of his artistic trajectory of almost 50 years. “From the metaphor of the mind as a prison, the viewer is guided by a mental journey from darkness to light”, according to the artist’s description.

Roger Ballen is known for evoking the absurdity of the human condition by creating disturbing and unexpectedly familiar images. Throughout his career, he accumulated iconic photographs that he took in ruinous places, inhabited by people who live in an extreme way on the margins of society. Ballen‘s goal has always been the same: to question the meaning of human existence.

The exhibition explores the enigmatic themes of the “Ballenesque” universe and reveals around 50 photographs and some videos that unequivocally reveal the power of his surrealist aesthetic.