Roger Ballen Quotes

Nothing is staged. And nothing is already there. Everything is transformed through the camera.

It is my belief that the most challenging photographs are those that create a tension between what we refer to as the real and the imaginative.

In the end, I believe that the most important influence on my aesthetic has been the photographs I have taken.

I never prepare a speech. I never think when I give a speech, except for "don't embarrass yourself or others," meaning "remember the names of the people you have to thank."

I never think about a photo before I start it. I try to let my mind relax, and then when I get there I do it.

My best Pictures are the ones I don’t understand.

When you go searching, you never know what you will find.

If an artist is one who spends his life trying to define his being, I guess I would have to call myself an artist.

[My] goal as an artist is to create increasingly complex images with greater and greater clarity of form and intensity of vision.