Roger Ballen: Drawing Meets Photography at Museum Dr. Guislain - Ghent

I knew very little about Roger Ballen before visiting Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent. I'd heard the name before, seen his most famous shots before but that was about it. For me, the venue was the big draw. I had no expectations and few clues to what his work was really about and honestly, I think that made the whole thing better.

I was there for about two hours, if you include wandering around the old hospital grounds afterwards. That ended up being just as much a part of the experience as the exhibition itself.

If you haven’t been to Museum Dr. Guislain, it's a (kind of) former psychiatric hospital. I say kind of because it’s still very much a working facility. Patients walking around, signage for services etc. I genuinely can't think of a better place for this exhibition to be. The stairwells, the old wards as well as the bathrooms that hosted the work, the general hospital smell, even just walking around outside afterwards. There was a connection between it all.

The first thing I noticed when arriving was how much of a personal connection I felt to his work, in the sense that Ballen seems able to turn thoughts and feelings into something visual. There were loads of moments where I found myself being drawn in to an image and thinking, I don’t know what i’m looking at, I don’t know what it’s trying to say.. but I feel like I know exactly what I'm looking at and what' it’s trying to say. Does that make sense? It’s hard to put in to words. A high contrast black and white photo of a flat wall with ambiguous stains, a lifeless figure on the floor holding a very much full of life animal. It speaks to me.

The exhibition was surprisingly hands-on too. There weren't any ropes keeping you back from the work. There was chalk for visitors to draw on walls. Pieces on the floor had clearly been walked over and smudged. But in a good way. Not overtly “mental healh” in a mental health facility. Normally galleries feel like places where you're not allowed to touch or get too close to anything, certainly in the UK. ‘No photos! Stay behind the line!’ This felt completely different. It felt open, a link between the art and the people viewing it. Like people had been invited into it rather than kept at arm's length. More exhibitions should be like this.

I feel like I had a connection with the why. Although unable to explain it. Howveer my documentarian photographer brain was wondering how. How did that moment happen? How much of this was planned? What camera was used? You get the idea.

Even after finding out that much of the work is carefully staged, I still couldn't reverse engineer a lot of it. If anything that made me admire it more. I'm lucky enough to make a living with a camera and there were still photographs where I just stood there thinking... how?

For me, the black and white work connected more than the colour pieces. I can't fully explain why. Maybe because it stripped everything back. Maybe because it suited the atmosphere better. Black and white is just cooler? Whatever the reason, that was the work I kept going back to.

One thing I thought, the poster image doesn't represent the whole exhibition. It's fine, but don't let it be the thing you judge the show on. The best work is inside.

I don't know what Roger Ballen is trying to say with a lot of his work and weirdly, I don't think I want to know. Leaving questions unanswered felt to me like part of the experience. The whole exhibition felt uncomfortable but full of connection. Wild but organised. Technically brilliant but completely unpredictable.

I didn't leave with any answers. I did leave wanting to create. Not Roger Ballen-style (Ballenesque) photographs. Just... create more. To push my own photography further. Stop playing it quite so safe. Develop more of a style. Experiment with editing. Spend more time understanding people. Make images that people feel before they understand them.

Perhaps it was the exhibition, maybe it was wandering around one of Europe's historically most progressive mental health institutions, Maybe Ghent itself, which has quickly become one of my favourite cities. Possibly the Belgian beer? haha. I’m not quite sure myself. Whatever it was, I left with that feeling I don't get very often. The sort that makes you want to get creative.

If you're in Ghent, I highly recommend going. Even if contemporary art isn't normally your thing. Take your time. Walk around the grounds. Don't worry about understanding everything. I certainly didn't.

Inspiration is enough.

More here: https://www.museumdrguislain.be/en/onview-en/rogerballen