Book Review: The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen and Gabriele Tinti
Decomposed, 2017. From The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen & Gabriele Tinti, published by powerHouse Books.
Written by: Andy Dion
Roger Ballen’s penchant for the unsettling precedes him and gives a voice to outsiders. His Roger the Rat character yearns to stand on the same pedestal of his rodent kin Mickey Mouse, yet remains sequestered to his dreary rundown world; perpetually striving to be an icon, but instead becoming a rejected iconoclast. His latest book, The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast is a joint effort with Italian poet Gabriele Tinti and glimpses into a world of exalted horror fit for freaks and castaways.
Eugene on the Phone, 2000. From The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen & Gabriele Tinti, published by powerHouse Books.
The scenes and characters in The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast are shrouded with mystery and wonder. Ballen photographs rag-wearing individuals inhabiting catacomb-like rooms with cave painting-esque murals, exposed wire and eerie decorations. According to the photographer, a good picture comes from nothing. Ballen knows full well rats carry notions of disease and filth, yet he challenges conventional conceptions, insisting the rat he photographs is simply that. His famous early photograph, “Cat Catcher, 1998,” shows a mirthful young man holding a cat. In reality, this man captures cats for a witch doctor to sacrifice. The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast’s scenes thrive under the assumption that they belong in a world unhindered by expectation.
Disguised, 2004. From The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen & Gabriele Tinti, published by powerHouse Books.
The depraved nature of the book hearkens back to the dawn of cinema and the earliest iterations of horror. Each gaunt figure in their cement-lined home glares back intently like Nosferatu. One such image shows a man tying a mask resembling an oafish skull to his head. Tinti’s poem “Mask” reflects on the subject’s condition — he puts his mask on to sing around the town at night only to return home later and sleep fully clothed, “losing the thread of memory.” Here stands a monster of a man experiencing an all-too-familiar condition of seeking worth. Behind the horror of Ballen’s photographs are stories waiting to be wringed out by Tinti.
Woman, man, and dog, 1995. From The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen & Gabriele Tinti, published by powerHouse Books.
Wires litter the rooms of Ballen’s subjects to display interconnectedness as a visual motif. Some wires connect people with their surroundings. In one image, a boy wearing a cat mask holds an oil-covered wire that etches a line from the bottom of the frame and leads to his head. Another wire echoes the “A” in a room’s graffitied decoration reading “HAPPY HAPPY” behind a sparse Christmas tree.
Happy, Happy, 2000. From The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen & Gabriele Tinti, published by powerHouse Books.
In a joint interview after the book’s main course, Ballen answers an age-old question: “why do you take photographs?” His answer sheds light on his work: “to better understand [the person] who Roger Ballen is…” By digging into the catacombs of the human interior, exploring unfettered Ballen-ism, the artist comes one step closer to discovering the interior nature of the soul. Tinti’s reply to the similarly posed “why do you write poetry?” leaves less room for illusion: “to defend against the power of death.”
Recluse, 2002. From The Earth Will Come to Laugh and Feast by Roger Ballen & Gabriele Tinti, published by powerHouse Books.
