Torbjørn Rødland, the photographer who makes us doubt actuality

Published on 5 October 2021. Updated on 16 July 2026.

We positively are in a brand new period. More typically than not, one can learn right here and there {that a} work is “problematic”. In basic, it isn’t an excellent signal for the work in query, which is discovering itself propelled into the abyss of cancel tradition. However, being “problematic” is the least that may be anticipated from a murals. It is initially what differentiates it from promoting, propaganda or ornamentation. Only “problematic” artworks can construct artwork historical past. The others, even probably the most explicitly demanding of them, solely feed the leisure trade. It will not be an issue in itself, but it surely does have one other function.

Torbjørn Rødland, the photographer of disturbing contrasts

At the age of 55, Norwegian photographer Torbjørn Rødland can boast about having a resolutely problematic physique of labor. One that isn’t meaningless, however topic to interpretation. “If someone looks at one of my images and asks me what it means, I say, ‘Yes, what does that mean?’ I create these images because I am interested in their history. I hope that everyone can imagine something by looking at them to find meaning in them.”

Torbjørn Rødland was born in 1970 in Stavanger, Norway’s fourth-largest metropolis and in addition one of many oldest, based in 1125. For the previous 10 years, he has been primarily based in Los Angeles, within the mountainous district of Laurel Canyon. In Stavanger, he did tradition research, earlier than graduating from the National College of Art and Design in Bergen. The first works he exhibited had been made whereas he was nonetheless a pupil. Composed of 21 photos, the collection In a Norwegian Landscape (1993-1995) is a succession of self-portraits that levels him within the breathtaking Norwegian wilderness. In the primary seven footage, he carries a plastic grocery store bag. That bag creates a disturbance since its mere presence appears to debunk the proper great thing about the panorama, with out completely ruining it.

“I create these images because I am interested in their history.” — Torbjørn Rødland

Curiously sufficient, this collection may nicely seem within the photographer’s work right now with out anybody noticing it was taken greater than 30 years in the past. That commentary may additionally apply to even older photos, which he didn’t exhibit, however agreed to publish in Dazed journal. One of them — already a self-portrait — reveals him as a teen, staring on the lens and holding a mug embellished with an eye fixed. This third eye complicates the scene fairly a bit, providing it much less literal narrative potentialities. Torbjørn Rødland had the chance to know early on that making a posh picture is a tough selection. As a teen, he contributed to native newspapers with press cartoons. He finally observed that his providers had been referred to as upon much less and fewer as his drawings grew to become extra ambiguous.

Bible Eye, his main exhibition, was offered on the Jones Center – The Contemporary Austin in Texas in 2021. The one which led to March 2021 on the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zurich, was entitled More than Tongue Can Tell. The mixture of those two titles set the tone for his photographic work which, because the Nineties, has been inspiring pleasure and anxiousness by imposing a special type of transaction onto viewers. Instead of delivering a selected, easy discourse to his viewers, Torbjørn Rødland confronts us with all types of assumptions. His concepts are structured in such a approach that that means differs for every considered one of us. These really feel extra like diabolical traps, which shortly change into an obsession. As one tasks that means onto them, one is completely conscious that it solely displays oneself.

“I like to think of tarot cards as very good templates for my images. Each card has symbolism. But the meaning is very open. It depends on the person reading the card, for whom they are reading it, and it changes according to the other cards placed on the left and right. The tarot card remains open to the questions that each individual asks, to his or her history, and, in my case, to the memories of popular photography. If I was 100% sure what one of my photos meant, then I wouldn’t really want to show it, or even take it, for that matter. I’m interested in everything that has several degrees of meaning, which can change its meaning, which is what makes different people have a different reading of the final image,” the Norwegian photographer shared with curator Trine Stephensen in an interview for Paper Journal.

“If I was 100% sure what my photos meant, then I wouldn’t really show, or even take them, for that matter.” — Torbjørn Rødland

Torbjørn Rødland‘s images do not produce strangeness, they produce doubt and, as the irruption of a plastic bag carried in the hand in a grandiose nature thwarts the intention of “beautiful photography”, often simply resort to a principle of duality. Two characters in the image — even if we only see one hand of one of them — are often of different ethnicities, sizes or ages: nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and in this slight sidestep from the obvious, doubt rushes in and the narration begins. It is quite surprising to be confronted with an image that chooses to be silent and at the same time seems to say to us: “It’s as much as you.” Paradoxically, it’s this ambiguity that makes their model and homogeneity, in precisely the identical approach that every episode of the Black Mirror tv collection can function completely totally different actors, play in completely totally different eras, however nonetheless type a complete with a novel model.

Rødland‘s work spans over thirty years, however it’s tough to say whether or not a selected work is new or older. Not that he has gone by way of the current historical past of images with out being attentive to the bifurcations inflicted on him by promoting images within the Nineties, vogue images within the 2000s and intimate images within the period of social networks and self-exposure. But the inflections imposed by photos typically in his images, particularly, should not literal both. At greatest, there are easy traps to tame our consideration. Besides, his works have stood the take a look at of time with out being intimidated by digital images. Rødland solely makes use of movie and consents to the uncertainty of an unrepentant outcome. Repentance, on this matter, could be fairly ineffective. His photos appear to be the fruit of such affected person premeditation that they summon refined Caravaggio-like chiaroscuro or appear to depend on the weather conditions of the second.

“His images have specific destinations, some are intended to be exhibited, others to be published in magazines, others to be collected in books, which sometimes creates some confusion among collectors,” Florence Bonnefous, who has been exhibiting the artist at Air de Paris gallery since 1999, explains. On uncommon events, the photographs change class. Thus, in 2015, on the Rodolphe Janssen Gallery in Brussels, he exhibited a set of pictures that includes Paris Hilton – which had been commissioned from him by the journal Purple. “She is sitting between her two dogs. She looks calm, but her Instagram is crazy. Nine hundred likes per minute. If your art seems frozen to you, then go for a walk in the water, or find something else,” he writes in a brief introduction to {the catalogue}.

But he didn’t rework into “works of art” the commissioned photos he made with Nicolas Cage, Robert Pattinson or singer Sophie. And for all these photos, the mannequin’s celeb appears to be simply one other layer of data. According to Maurizio Cattelan, who interviewed him in 2017 and requested him what a picture is product of, he replied: “Layer upon layer of perception and identification.” His photos appear to be the fruit of such affected person premeditation that they summon refined Caravaggio chiaroscuro or appear to depend on the weather conditions of the second.

Jean-Luc Godard‘s famous saying “tracking shots are a matter of morality” invites us to think in the same way about how Torbjørn Rødland considers photography and the place of his work among contemporary images in the digital age of photojournalism and social networks. His position seems based on a certain morality. “I stand there, next to the person who is looking at these images, and I say to him: ‘Oh my goodness, isn’t it?’ I’m not overlooking, as if I knew upfront what she needs to be on the lookout for in these photos, what she ought to discover there. I’m subsequent to her, discovering these images fascinating too, with out actually realizing what they imply.”