The Shadow Chamber is adorned with strange artifacts and cryptic markings and populated by characters you might not wish to encounter alone on a dimly lighted street at night. It is a place where the South African-based artist Roger Ballen has spent a lot of time lately, making photographs and scratching his consciousness. It is also the title of his new book, out from Phaidon. "When you take your eyeballs and you turn them around in your head, things happen," says Ballen, who once favored and then later abandoned a more documentary view of life.
The artist is projecting, of course. But the outside world, too, has been known to show a pretty sinister face. And not just to Ballen. In fact, some of the more interesting clothes of the season appear to have been conceived with this dark place in mind, even if the designer versions come elaborately embroidered or trimmed in astrakhan. Ballen had never photographed fashion, but he found it a willing accomplice to his vision - so, too, the fearless Selma Blair, who appears this month in a remake of "The Fog." "Fashion creates the illusion of beauty, of the world being perfect," Ballen says. "But we know that even when you dress in these clothes, the world is not that way. You can't ever rid yourself of the shadow."
