Roger Ballen’s Photography of Rural South Africa.

• Barry
  February 28th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

  Heeeeeey, I’m 1/4 jackal too!

• dodgyd55
  February 28th, 2007 at 6:10 pm

  wow they look inbred…… you were thinking it to

• americano
  February 28th, 2007 at 6:11 pm

  Geezus H Christ….I took a look at the link and was shocked. The folks in the Platteland make the country folk back home in the South look like supermodels. WTF? Is this a result of inbreeding or what? Scary scary scary looking people….

• brian t
  February 28th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

  It’s not just breeding, malnutrition played a part. It’s a harsh life.

  I was there from age 6 to age 23. No, I’m not sorry I left! My fellow Brits used to call the Afrikaners “Rocks”, and it wasn’t a compliment. Every school vacation they’d throw themselves down from the Highveld to the Natal coast, an event known as the Rockslide…

  PS: “Platteland” translated from Afrikaans is “Flatland”. As two-dimensional as it sounds.

• melissa
  February 28th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

  is this a real photo, or has it been doctored?

• Carl Huber
  February 28th, 2007 at 7:52 pm

  Those are outstanding portraits. Really, there’s so much story behind those eyes.

• Greg Smith
  February 28th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

  What’s the story behind those ears?

• Joe
  February 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

  They look like two cars coming down the road with both doors open. Is that drool I see?

• BenJCarter
  March 1st, 2007 at 2:26 am

  Is it just me or do those ears look like LOTR special effects…

• Wynand Winterbach
  March 1st, 2007 at 6:13 am

  Yes Brian T, we Afrikaners are all Rocks and all look that stupid.

  If you lived here, you know how selective the photographer was with his models. You are just as prejudiced as the British descendants who live in SA.

  But I guess that anyone who is as uncritical about the information with which he/she is presented is too simple minded to consider alternatives and probably too unwilling to give up a superiority complex for fact.

  I might as well add a little barb here. Brits are not exactly considered to have world class genes. A Danish friend of mine says that the UK is known in Denmark as the “shit hole of Europe”.

• MarlonS
  March 1st, 2007 at 9:30 am

  Apologies for being pedantic, but a correction to the post left by BrianT…

  Literally translation for “platteland” would be flatland.

  In context however, it means countryside.

• HvH
  March 1st, 2007 at 10:55 am

  Deliverance 2 Revenge of the Banjo Boy

• Justin
  March 1st, 2007 at 12:04 pm

  Can you hear me now…

• Miranda Vink
  March 1st, 2007 at 3:53 pm

  I guess photographer Roger Ballen’s goal was to make the most unflattering portraits possible of South Africa’s white trash population. Judging by this photograph he certainly succeeded…

• Storm
  March 1st, 2007 at 6:15 pm

  Yes, they do seem somewhat unflattering. I suppose the Diane Arbus school of freakshow photography will never die. In my eyes it is an immature photographer who seeks out these types of easy hits. When we start out we all shoot old people with lots of wrinkles, and tramps with torn faces. Eventually, hopefully, we learn to see the freaks inside ourselves instead.

  For more great fun at other people’s expenses, Google “Shelby Lee Adams”.

• Kirsten
  March 2nd, 2007 at 1:35 am

  I think these pictures are sort of beautiful actually. Especially the woman so sweetly holding the puppies. These people have obviously had a rough life and the diversity of humankind is kind of wondrous, if sometimes seemingly a bit tragic.

  Although Greg Smith’s comment was pretty funny.

• Vanessa
  April 16th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

  Wynand Winterbach:

  You’ve got some nerve talking about the “prejudiced” British in SA, and the poor, poor Afrikaners. Because we all know the Afrikaners in South Africa have never bestowed prejudice upon anyone; especially not the Black South Africans!

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