The beginning of a new year gives me the chance to continue the conversation I've been having with Roger Ballen for three years. Last year we spoke about his exhibition Asylum of the Birds, at the Circa Gallery. This year I'm at Gallery Momo, in Parktown North, Johannesburg, to talk about his new book and accompanying exhibition, The House Project.Unlike previous projects this collaboration between Ballen and Italian philosopher and writer Didi Bozzini is a collection of his mostly unpublished photos from the past 25 years organised in a way that compares mental states to the levels of an imaginary house. The photos on each level have been selected to speak in a sometimes parallel, sometimes divergent, conversation, with an essay Bozzini has written, creating an ominous, twisted walk through the dark side of the human condition seen through Ballen's eyes.DEEP-SEATED: A couch with bits of mannequin impaled in its upholstery forms part of documentary and art photographer Roger Ballen's new work at Gallery MomoThe journey begins in the cellar of this imaginary house, a space he describes as the "primal human mind - the subconscious of the subconscious".These photos represent an aesthetic departure for Ballen and form part of his "apparition series". They will be published in another book later this year. They're dark, abstract ghoulish figures, painted on glass and then photographed - a technique he spent eight years working on.IN PANE: Dark, abstract figures, painted on glass and then photographedOn the ground floor there are images of misfits and animals sprawled over sofas in expressions of the absurdity of human nature - a major concern for the artist over the course of his career.Bozzini's essay kicks into high gear in the section dealing with the first floor, which uses the metaphor of a library to describe "people trying to order their lives in some obscure way that reflects subconscious needs or wishes in conflict with the conscious wishes".Here the photos are all still-lifes - a cat in a pot plant, a baby's head poking through the wall next to a stuffed bird.Finally there's the attic, the place of people's fantasies, "their delusions, their illusions, the superego, the inability to cope with life on the planet and their desire to look to the heavens for a way out".Ballen fans will be familiar with his love of strange houses from his other projects, Boarding House and Asylum of the Birds, but here the house exists only on the pages of the book and on the gallery walls.Several installations give an added sense of eeriness - a mannequin with its legs cut off lying at the entrance, a couch with bits of mannequin impaled on its upholstery.While in Finland last year Ballen came across an old house in a forest and "created a Roger Ballen aesthetic inside the house"."Then a museum came and took the house down, piece by piece, and reassembled it in the museum so that it became a piece of sculpture that people could walk through."The house was taken down after the show but the project will form the subject of Ballen's next book, due out later this year. Thames and Hudson will publish a large retrospective collection of his work in 2017. This constant output is the only way Ballen can exercise his compulsion to keep photographing; at 65 he's not slowing down.As he says: "It's like being a juggler - you get better and you gotta keep adding another ball...so you take these ideas about the mind, make something coherent from them and hope the picture reflects that."The House Project is at Gallery Momo until February 28..