“Bar Scene, 2021” is the concluding image of Torbjørn Rødland’s new monograph and depicts the end of a particularly heavy night. Featuring two men propping up a third guy as the group makes their exit, it’s one of the Norwegian photographer’s more accessible photographs, easy to read and without the sense of discomfort commonly attached to his work. The trio were each street-cast separately in Berlin, Torbjørn tells me, where he’s currently on sabbatical (typically, he resides in Los Angeles, his home of more than a decade). The rest of the book’s protagonists were cast via Instagram, Model Mayhem and more formal modelling agencies, he notes, while some subjects he has worked with previously.
“There are people I have collaborated with repeatedly and examples of people that I only meet to make photographs with,” he says. “More common is a continuous contact; I keep them updated with what’s happening to the photograph and might propose another collaboration.” Largely shot in LA, but also Boston, Berlin and London, the photographer’s approach to casting is a significant component within his multi-decade-spanning career (in 1999, he exhibited in the Venice Biennale, while his earliest retrospective was in 2003 at Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art).
“I don’t want to make something that upsets people,” he explains, alluding to the often jarring nature of his work. Who he chooses to photograph then — and, in turn, who volunteers to be photographed by him — is vital to ensure a sense of trust in the relationship. Still, a certain degree of separation is also important, he asserts; he would never photograph a family member or partner, for example. “It can be more confusing or harder for me to see the person like anyone else would [if I know them intimately], which is maybe why I haven’t photographed my parents. I want there to be a direct contact between the viewer and the image.” Extra information, like his own relationship with the subject, might harm that.
Published by MACK, The Pregnant Virgin brings together work made between 2016 and 2022; some of which have been exhibited on gallery walls previously, while others are showcased for the first time in print. As Torbjørn explains it, his work is rarely series-based; instead, he prefers to shoot continuously, returning to the pictures later to assess an identity that might best suit a specific collection of images. Here, his particular brand of staged portraiture includes still lifes of chewed deodorant sticks and a condom filled with bolognese, as well as a portrait of the late popstar and producer SOPHIE and “Glass Edge, 2018”, in which a woman bites into a glass in a scene that recalls the surreal disruption of Yorgos Lanthimos’ breakout feature, Dogtooth.
While the book’s moniker is a nod to The Virgin Mary, Torbjørn is only loosely concerned with archetypal religious paintings and the type of classical ‘art’ photography that his images might appear to be referencing. “I don’t think [the work’s] exploring religious painting, as much as I’m maybe stumbling into making contemporary versions of some of the same inclinations that I’m interested in,” the photographer says. “On another level, rather than referring to these motifs like the previous generation – think Cindy Sherman’s History Portraits – I’m interested in what made these cultural forms popular to begin with. What is the potential power of these motifs?”
“Part of the title is this negotiation between interiority and surface, and I think it also points to the miraculous nature of creation itself,” he continues, further probing the book’s moniker (he keeps a planner of potential titles, from which books, shows and individual works are all named). “That something comes into the world in other means than the rational, something that has no reason to exist [just] comes into being — a lot of the time that’s the experience of making art, you just set the stage for it.”
A recurring theme throughout Torbjørn’s practice is his preoccupation with contrasts, a device frequently employed in the new book, where young women are partnered with older men, and objects are set up in curious juxtapositions. “I discovered early on that I was drawn to the type of contrast with a symbolic potential in it,” he says. “In 1998, when I was in Stockholm and more spontaneous (in my approach), there was this white van parked at the edge of the forest that I photographed, not really knowing why but realising that it’s a current mythological object. It’s a white van, so the colour of good, but it has become a sort of creepy van; it has an eerie quality to it.”
This use of signifiers is core to how Torbjørn’s images work. “It’s that type of symbolic meaning that is where the viewer is needed, and it varies with the type of photographic memories and personal experiences viewers bring to the work,” he says. “I’m interested in what isn’t shown and what is suggested, and therefore, what can be different content for one viewer versus the next. I’ve also found that [contrasting subjects] is a way to force the reading away from more commercial photography.” Largely backlit in the vein of more mainstream photography, his images, shot on film, are often conceived with clinical lighting that speaks to the advertising world.
Jointly anchored in the visual memories of others and an oppositional quality, Torbjørn’s images are not directly shaped by outside perception, but naturally, he finds this compelling. “I’m always interested, and with social media, it’s easier to see what type of reactions people perform, at least in these settings. Definitely, I’m not shutting my ear to it because it’s a part of the work,” he finishes. “It’s like tarot cards; it depends on who’s reading to whom, and what their life story is, and also what the card next to it is. That type of sensitivity to context has always been important to me.”
‘The Pregnant Virgin’ (2023) by Torbjørn Rødland is published by MACK and is available here.
Credits
All images courtesy of the artist and MACK