Opened in 2025, just across the threshold from the Inside Out Centre for the Arts, Roger Ballen established the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography, a space dedicated entirely to the medium of photography. The Centre combines exhibitions, research, and public programming, with a focus on photography’s experimental and conceptual frontiers.
Its inaugural exhibition, PSYCHOPOMP!, curated by Boris Eldagsen, explores the use of AI-generated imagery to investigate Jungian ideas of the unconscious and the shadow self. Through cutting-edge exhibitions and dialogue-driven events, the Centre encourages debate about how photography intersects with psychology, technology, and contemporary culture, both in Africa and globally.
Highlights in the upcoming program include the celebration of Roger Ballen’s new publication, Spirits and Spaces, published by Thames & Hudson, with the exhibition “Chaos Has Many Faces” opening at the end of October 2025. The Centre will then open 2026 with an exhibition on African fashion photography, showcasing leading photographers in the field as selected by seminal African fashion designers.
In late February 2026, the Centre will host the inaugural Todi Johannesburg Photography Circle, bringing together twelve of the most prominent international and African photography experts for a week-long gathering in Johannesburg to discuss the business of photography, explore issues unique to the African context, and develop strategies for the promotion and future of photography worldwide, seen through an African lens.
Roger Ballen Centre for Photography
2 Duncombe Rd.
Forest Town, Johannesburg, 2193, South Africa
https://www.insideoutfoundation.co.za/
