Roger Ballen: roger ballen.! drawing meets photography

Preview: written before the show opened

In Snatched (2021), a face drawn in charcoal on a grubby wall wears a real black cat mask with yellow marbles for eyes. A lizard lies across its chest with a mouse in its jaws. Ballen, a New Yorker who has worked in South Africa for decades, began in documentary photography and in the late 1990s started drawing into his pictures.

The show comes from museum gugging, the Art Brut museum near Vienna, where it opened in 2025 with more than 120 works. Here it runs loosely in date order: black-and-white photographs, newer colour work, Polaroids, etchings and original drawings, plus installations including a new piece, Drawing Man. You start with pictures that look photographed and move toward ones that look scrawled. Fittingly, it lands in Tacheles, which spent two decades as Berlin's most drawn-on squat.

Fotografiska is open until 23:00 daily (last entry 22:00). Tickets are €15, or €10 for under-25s, students and over-65s. On Tuesdays from 18:00, online tickets are two for one.