I was reading an interview on Fecal Face (art website) recently and got pointed to the work of South African photographer Roger Ballen via an inspired painter. He seems to be an interesting case in that his work is clearly on the fine art side of things, but he started out in documentary work. It’s just that his documentary work was a projection of his own thoughts and feelings, and he took this and ran with it, eventually collaborating and taking more liberties to craft his images. I think the concept of objectivity in documentary photography is a myth. It’s not bad to strive for but in Ballen’s case we can see a man who recognized what many consider the “flaw” of documentary imagery and made a long term, celebrated body of work out the resulting process.Image copyright Roger Ballen