PLATTELAND (signed by Roger Ballen)

SIGNED, DATED & INSCRIBED BY ROGER BALLEN, FIRST EDITION, 'Platteland - Images from Rural South Africa', published by William Waterman Publications, Rivonia, 1994, hardcover, photographic images, unpaginated, 24.7 cms x 29 cms, condition: as new.

Stark duotone portrait photographs capture the hidden world of South Africa's impoverished white inhabitants of the "plattelands," revealing a ravaged world of social and economic isolation, disease, poverty, alcoholism, and abandonment.

Platteland was born out of the profound irony that despite the political privileges Apartheid had bestowed on whites, in the physical heart of the land there is inescapable testimony to the failure of the regime even to secure the well-being of the privileged minority. Many of the people Ballen encounters feel strangled by poverty and preconception, rejected and downgraded. Above all else, most are severely alienated by the radical changes taking place in the Society around them. In these powerful and riveting images, Roger Ballen penetrates a world that had previously been shrouded under the mantle of white supremacy.

 A NOW SCARCE SEMINAL PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK WHICH HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT DOCUMENT IN THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTRUCT (of SA).