Roger Ballen's "Shadow Chamber"is a series of black-and-white portraits of homeless people in South Africa, normally accompanied by some kind of animal or animal-like object. Ballen included the animals to make a statement on how homeless people are seen in our society, as animals.
A common motif in this work is the animals being a lighter colour than the people in the photo. Light has always been a symbol of purity and having the animals be lighter than the people could suggest that homeless people are less than animals or at least less pure. Many homeless people have mental illnesses who can't work so they don't have a home. "Shadow Chamber" could also be a statement on how people with mental illnesses are viewed. is The series even compares people to animals by showing a giant, nest-like formation of wire and then showing a man with pliers and a coat hanger, implying that he made the formation.
By showing these two pictures in the series, Ballen compares the man to a bird making a nest.
Another thing Ballen does is dress the people like animals, so that they are becoming animals themselves.
Compositionally, the photos are all very formal, as they are portraits. The detail and form shows how dirty most of the people are, like animals. The work is titled "Shadow Chamber" and it lives up to its name with high contrast and the subjects casting shadows on the walls behind them. In one image, interior framing is used for a t-rex toy a little boy has put on top of his head. By framing the t-rex and placing it above the boy, the image suggests that even an animal that has not existed for thousands of years is above a homeless person.
The subjects of these pictures are almost always shot in front of a wall with some kind of primitive-looking drawings on the wall. The backgrounds are always different and the series is almost like documentary images of different animals in their habitats. In our modern society, and in almost every society, poor/homeless people are seen as less than people and sometimes even less than animals. Roger Ballen uses his series, "Shadow Chamber", to juxtapose homeless people and animals and how they are viewed.
