Peter: Roger, how do you feel about the fact that somebody can just ask one of these many AI engines to make a kind of Roger Ballenesque image?

Roger: We tried that a few times with somebody who actually won a lot of awards in this AI photo business. He doesn’t call his pictures  ‘photography’. He calls them ‘pronto images’ or something like that, but he doesn’t say it’s photography. So photography for this person is working with a lens, with a camera back, and transferring light onto a chip or a piece of film. 

But you know, at the end of the day, AI has tremendous variability. The first exhibition we had in the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography was this AI exhibition, and there were pictures in there that could have come out of traditional photography, and there were pictures that looked like they came from a Hollywood movie. So it has a tremendous capability for transforming things. 

But the same man tried to do something with me, tried to take some of my images and transform them through AI, and the AI couldn’t get it. There are just so many subtleties there. And complexities and personality issues that, when they tried to do it, it looked contrived, it looked staged. It didn’t have a fluidity to it. 

Whether that’ll change with time, I don’t know. I think that what we’re looking at is, you know, it’s like in geology – we keep looking at new foundations, new levels. So in 10 years, reality will be more than it is now. So people then can’t, don’t, know the difference. That’s, that’s what the reality is.

And so I think that’s what you’re looking at, and people adjust to it like everything else. When I first got a cell phone, I couldn’t figure out how I could ever work with something that didn’t have the little keyboard on the phone. Now, I don’t even think about it. I thought, “No, I’ll never be able to read a newspaper on the phone”. Now, I do this every day. 

So, it’s very difficult to know, and I just consider myself very lucky that I grew up in a non-Internet age, where there were no phones. When I went to university, they didn’t even have calculators. So I have a different bearing on life. And I’m also in this generation, so I have the ability to balance one off against the next. And the next generation may say the same thing, you know. So who knows what – that’s what we live in. The whole planet might blow up tomorrow, not even from a war. It could be a giant volcano that covers the earth with ash. We don’t know.

Gabby: I think Peter, if I may jump in, that what I found really interesting, working in the same space as Roger for a few years – and really seeing how the foundation works – is that there’s the Inside Out Foundation and Roger’s recently launched the Centre for Photography; and the first exhibition at the centre – I think it was called Psychopomp – was all about this discussion of AI. You know, you can really kind of box in a photographer as having a certain style, but what I find phenomenal about Roger, starting off from film and moving to digital – Spirits and Spaces is his first book published in colour – is how he allows other artists in the Centre for Photography to explore themes, such as AI, and how it’s raising these ethical questions. Roger is confronting these issues head-on and moving with the times. I found that really interesting because I think a lot of photographers can get stuck in a certain way of working. 

And what I found really fantastic about Roger’s work is that, even though there’s been work in different mediums, there’s always still been this Ballenesque aesthetic. Even with this film, I directed it, and Gavin shot it, but it’s such a close collaboration with Roger that it still has the Ballenesque aesthetic. So I think that’s, yeah, quite an amazing trait.

Peter: Yeah! Like I said, I am impressed by the head-on-ness of exploring AI in the first exhibition at the Centre for Photography. Because, you know,  I am a digital child, but I also grew up climbing trees – I was born in the 70s. And I got my first computer in the early 1980s, and I loved it, but I’m also very aware of what we’ve lost. I love the internet; it’s a dream come true. And it’s also a nightmare. So, it’s complicated.

Gabby: But I think that’s what’s special about this is that there are these technologies available to us, but we still chose to shoot it and not make an AI film. So there’s this wonderful relationship of knowing that these tools are out there and thinking, how can it help? And sometimes it can help. 

For example, when we were visualising what the spirit should look like with the hessian sack, I had this idea of a hessian sack and maybe a mask, and I used AI to draw up a mockup to show Roger, so that we could visually be on the same page in pre-production. But then, there was this collaboration, and chatting to Marguerite, and going and looking at all the different hessian materials and choosing it, and then building, you know, what the ‘spirit’ looks like. So I do think it’s, you know, you can’t move away from…you have to use it as a tool and use it with human interaction. But you can’t disregard it completely.

Peter: Because there is a real world that does actually exist, which you know, in a way is my response to that. But why I’m saying that is also because, Roger, I realised something when looking at the pictures – and specifically because they are in colour now, which kind of shifted my own subconscious perceptions of them. And I realised that now, when I’m looking at an image on my phone – which is where I nearly always look at images – I’m expecting a manipulation. I’m expecting a kind of Instagram slickness in nearly everything I see. And I realised very quickly, looking at your images, how flat our visual culture has become. And I’m talking about the actual physical depth of the photograph. You know, so you have kind of a shallow depth in terms of taking the images, but the shadows are very much there. You can see the three-dimensionality of everything. You can sense the actual, you know, physicality of the space.

And that’s not present in nearly all of the images I look at. There’s really a kind of congealed flatness, almost like we’re dealing with planes rather than dimensions. And the 3D world of yours is still very physically evident. And I think that it’s going to be hard for AI to get it, you know – I’m sure that it’ll get there.

Roger: Look, there are lots and lots of subtleties to these pictures. I always say, you know, a photograph’s like a painting – a painting takes, say, a thousand brush strokes to make; well, it’s the same with a photograph. Where you go left, I might go right. When I go right, you might go left. And so, this is a whole history of building a building in a way. So, it’s not just meekly putting things together because they sort of seemed like they should be there. There are a lot of subtleties there.

And ultimately, you’re trying to do one thing: you’re trying to create an image that has substance to it. And AI doesn’t understand the words ‘psychological substance’. It doesn’t understand that, and probably will not do so in my life. And so, this is an intuitive and a conscious capability, and it’s not one or the other, you know; it's artistic, and it’s scientific. And to be able to get there, you know, it’s part of my personality; it’s what separates me, maybe, from somebody else. And that’s what a good artist does. You know, Picasso’s Picasso – that’s what he does. You can try to make Picassos, but it’s still not a Picasso, as much as you try. And maybe you’ll make a flower that looks like his, but then the next painting won’t look like his. And so, you know, it’s much more complicated than it looks.

And the problem with photography is that it’s the simplest art form, but also the most difficult. Everybody is walking around pushing these buttons, and anybody can do it. And that’s what makes it difficult, because out of those millions and billions of Instagram pictures that I’ve seen over the years, I can hardly remember one. It’s like remembering a fly that went past my head last night. I can’t remember the fly. I don’t know what it even looks like. I’ve forgotten about it already.

And that’s what you’re looking at, unfortunately. And I think the most interesting thing is that we go back to your first question about humanity, and we look at Instagram, and you can predict, I’m like 90% sure, most of the time what’s gonna get the most likes. It’s clear: it’s following celebrity stuff, following things about fashion, following things about very extreme politics. So those are all the things that really seem to be setting people off, and that’s what the species is focused on. And to go back to your initial point about the revelation of deeper consciousness, look at Instagram, and you won’t have a lot of options.

Peter: (laughing) I’m laughing, but inside I’m also crying.

Roger: Yeah, that’s what Nietzsche said. You remember Nietzsche’s favourite quote, “When I laugh, I cry”?

Peter: Yeah! So I looked at what, as far as I know, were the most viewed Instagram images or videos last year. And they were just hot people looking at the camera. You know, just people playing with the camera, and that was it. And then, you know, they got 20 million views or whatever. And I probably clicked on them.

Roger: Yeah, well,  that’s what it is. It is what it is. That's all you can say. That’s part of the species; that’s part of an evolutionary species’ behaviour trait. That’s what we’re looking at. 

Peter: Roger, I just want to ask you – just because it’s the obvious question to ask – but can you tell me a little bit about your shift towards working in colour photography?

Roger: It happened very spontaneously. I had a book called Ballenesque published by Thames and Hudson in 2016. It was a retrospective book. And with each book, like what we did with Gabby, I like to do a film. And  I was friendly with some of the people at Leica Cameras, and I said, “Well, I don’t have a digital – I’ve been using film”. And they said, “Here, take this, take all the equipment, it’s yours”. So Leica gave me digital cameras. And I started making the video, and during the time I was making the video, I started, just by chance, taking colour pictures because I could transform them to black and white. 

But when I saw the colour pictures and made them into black and white, I said to Marguerite, my artistic director, “Oh, the colour ones look better to me”. So that was how it happened. 

And so, this book is basically sort of a monochromatic colour. It’s not bright, bright colours – it’s somewhere between colour and black and white. And, when I look at the colours, I understand the psychology of colours, but I think, more appropriately, when I look at the colours, I see them almost as black-and-white tonal relationships.

Peter: I can see why you say that. I mean, it’s not exactly David LaChapelle, you know!

Roger: No, I’m not David Chappelle, definitely not. Then I give up. 

Peter: (laughs)

Roger: No, I’m not…I’m not…there!

Gabby: If I may jump in, I think what was really interesting, when we actually were filming – because we had our cinematographer and his lighting team kind of setting up the colour space – was that, going back to – I spoke earlier about that collaboration with Roger – is, you know, understanding that we are filming in colour, but trying to really match the grade and the look of the photographs, and bringing those photographs to life in the film. 

And speaking to Gavin afterwards, what was just so interesting for him was to have such a close collaboration with Roger on set, discussing lighting and framing, and, you know, really getting that monochromatic colour. But it’s a bit more difficult than just capturing something that’s there in its vivid brightness.

Peter: Yes, that is one of my questions: so the film is in colour, but barely, you know; just. And several scenes are substantially more colourful than the rest. As far as I can recall, it’s the two dolls – the rag doll and the sex doll – that are quite explicitly in colour. So my two questions are, why did you decide to keep it so dark, to keep it mostly perceptually black and white? And then also, what is the significance of the images that are in colour, the dolls – I want to say “female representation”, but that just popped up now. Why did you choose to make those images more colourful?

Gabby: I think what was really interesting about the process is that we chose props that were in Roger’s book, and created each scene in the film based on a chapter in the book.  So, it’s not an exact replication of a photograph. Though some of them are quite similar, there may actually be an additional prop in that room that is seen in a completely separate photo in the book. So it was almost like this spirit exploring, with each room being a chapter. So I think what we tried to do was get across the visual feeling of each of those chapters. 

For example, the swinging rag doll in the childhood room had more of the brighter colours in Roger’s chapter. And that’s why we had that more colourful prop there. Similarly, the libido section, which is quite haptic and visceral, also gives that feeling.

And it’s interesting, because we spent quite a lot of time, for example, in the childhood chapter, the childhood room. But the libido room, with the doll and the snake, is actually very short. It’s just one sequence – he opens the door, he sees this blow-up doll, and there’s a live snake that flicks its tongue. And then the door closes, and he goes into this next space. 

And because that part was so short, we wanted it to be impactful, which is why there’s a bit more of that spark of colour there. But we didn’t want to dwell in the libido section for too long. Because sometimes, I think what’s actually disturbing are those quick flashes of something. “Did I see that?" – that quick sliver of the snake’s tongue – you don’t have to be in a space for too long for it to have an impact on you. It’s actually that timing.

Peter: Yeah. By that point, I think I was watching the film almost entirely with my stomach. And that’s something that I’ve been aware of every single time I’ve watched it – is that I start watching it with my mind and my kind of, you know, mental construction of things. And very quickly, it’s a visceral experience, not a cerebral one. 

Gabby: I think that’s also due to the sound design. We had a phenomenal sound designer, Richard Staub, and he really understands Roger’s aesthetic as well as the psychological space that he works in. He didn’t do a conventional musical score; it was more layers of real sounds that build up to create this mood and this energy. So, a lot of the sound is true to what you’re seeing. You know, you’ll see a swing, and you’ll hear the creak of the swing.

So, a lot of it is this diegetic sound that exists within the space. But then, even in the chaos room, which builds the whole soundscape in the film, it kind of starts off slowly –  this spirit is walking through each room, not necessarily aware that the other spirits are moving around him, and he slowly becomes more aware that the spaces are alive, that the spirits start following him.

And as our main spirit kind of becomes aware of the room, the pacing of the edit and the pacing of the sound really amps up. And the way that he created that sound in the chaos room, again, it’s not a musical score; it’s these real sounds layered on top of one another, that actually kind of exist in that space, but also in our subconscious, to give you that guttural, visceral feeling. And it just sucks you in. 

So he was just a phenomenal person to collaborate with. And, it was also an amazing trust from Roger’s side, because we had worked with Richard before on smaller projects. And here, you know, I chatted to Roger about what we wanted for the film. And I briefed Richard, but really, I let him play. And when he sent it back, we did give tweaks, but we really left a lot of it up to him because we trusted that he, you know, understood this world.

Roger: Really good job. I mean, that’s the difference between photography, generally speaking, and filmmaking. Filmmaking is more about teamwork, even though some people put more into it than others, but photography is a lonely-wolf business, generally.

Peter: Yeah. So, is the spirit the artist on some level?

Gabby: So, I’ll tell you our kind of thought process. And I think it’s important to mention that for the general viewer who maybe doesn’t know Roger, we were quite happy to leave it vague and let the audience really put in their own thoughts. But to let you in on our concept and thought process, when Roger showed me this book, and as you’ve been discussing, so much about Roger’s work is capturing the subconscious. And I really love to think about it, that he’s actually showing us a little part in his subconscious. It’s almost like I was going in as a documentary filmmaker, and seeing, like, how did Roger get there? And so we had this idea of this kind of unnamed masked spirit waking up in a coffin-like space. 

And, the first kind of space they’re in is this childhood theme, and as they walk through each space, at first it’s the audience that notices that the eyes of the drawings on the wall are moving, but the spirit itself doesn’t notice. And then the audience notices that the shadow breaks away, and the audience notices that the spirits are following him out the door. 

But it’s only in the third or fourth space that the spirit actually starts to become aware that there are some real things moving – there are real rats, there’s a real snake, there’s a real bird. The spirit notices that, but only as it gets further on does the spirit actually notice itself that it’s being followed. And then it all devolves into chaos, which, as you know, is a common theme in Roger’s work – at the end of the day, the only thing we can be certain of is chaos.