The Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue is currently hosting an exhibition of photographs by Roger Ballen. The photographs were made in a three-story warehouse that functions as a boarding house for the disenfranchied and impoverished families in Johannesburg. Although the photographs function as a document of a sort, the carefully constructed photographs more closely resemble the boxes of Joseph Cornell in the meticulous arrangement of artifacts for composition and re-interpretation. The images are printed in a large format (50x50cm to 80x80cm) and it's worth seeing the prints in person. Alternately, Phaidon has produced a book. Ballen also features some of the images on his website.

An aside: The gallery is also featuring an exhbition of "Modern Masters" on the fourth floor. Included in the exhibition is Mark Rothko's Plum and Black, a large dark canvas that mesmerized me in the way Kapoor's work often does. If I win the lottery, I might have to treat myself to it as a Christmas present to myself. :)