host: Peggy Sue Amison

Roger Ballen is one of the most prominent contemporary photographers. He was born in New York, but has lived in South Africa for over 30 years. Having moved there, he initially worked as a geologist, which was his trained profession. This is when he took his first documentary photographs, driven by the preoccupation with a separate world of small towns (so-called Dorps). Ballen portrays residents of these towns as well as the impenetrable world behind closed doors of their homes, which appears to be the ultimate repertory of quaintness.

Robert J. C. Young is a British postcolonial theorist, cultural critic, and historian. Young is Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies which appears quarterly. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. In 2013 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.