World-renowned photographer Roger Ballen will visit Latvia with a lecture at ISSP and a retrospective exhibition at the Mark Rothko Art Centre

On June 6 at 18:00, the contemporary photography platform ISSP will host a public lecture and audience meeting with the world-renowned photographer Roger Ballen. The event is organized in collaboration with the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils, where a major retrospective exhibition of the artist will open the day before. During the meeting, it will be possible to purchase the artist’s books and receive his autograph.

Roger Ballen (South Africa) is considered one of the most important and influential photographers of the 21st century. His work combines photography, drawing, painting, collage, and sculptural elements, creating a unique hybrid visual language. The artist’s black-and-white photographs balance between documentary and fiction, forming psychologically intense, surreal spaces that invite viewers to confront the darker layers of the subconscious and the human psyche.

Ballen has published more than 25 books, and his works are included in over 50 major international museum collections. In 2022, he represented South Africa at the Venice Biennale.

In 2025, two significant publications by Roger Ballen were also released: Spirits and Spaces, the artist’s first book of color photographs, and Inferno, in which Ballen’s photographs are presented in dialogue with the texts of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

“My photographs are psychological mechanisms. They reach the edge of consciousness and lead into a space of otherness – beyond the known, the familiar, the acceptable.”

The ISSP lecture will be a rare opportunity in Latvia to meet one of the most prominent figures in contemporary photography in person and to hear the artist’s reflections on his creative process, imagery, and more than fifty years of work in photography.

The exhibition The Other Mind: Roger Ballen. Retrospective will be on view from June 5 to August 30 at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils, offering a broad insight into the artist’s creative practice spanning more than fifty years. The exhibition will cover various stages of Ballen’s artistic career – from his early documentary works to later staged compositions in which photography transforms into a multilayered installation environment. In the 1990s, the artist developed an approach he describes as “documentary fiction”, blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination.

Free entry, seating is limited. Register here

Event language: English

 

The lecture is organized by ISSP – a platform for contemporary photography, art and education. ISSP organises local and international education and exchange programmes, produces exhibitions, publications and events and has gathered a thriving community of artists in Latvia and abroad while exploring the connections between art and society. More information: www.issp.lv