“opposites must never cease to come together”

the following is a piece i wrote for whitewall magazine (http://www.whitewallmag.com/) about the work of my dear friend torbjørn rødland. he just put another book out with steidl (http://www.steidlville.com/books/685-I-Want-to-Live-Innocent.html). please enjoy, though it’s not the same without the photographs…

TORBJØRN RØDLAND: OPPOSITES MUST NEVER CEASE TO COME TOGETHER

BY SARAH KESSLER

Attempting to uncover the essence of Torbjørn Rødland’s project is like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. No interpretations fit, but I have the sense that with further labor I will ultimately get where he wants me to go. I soldier on, generating hosts of half-functional analogies in the process. Each reading fails when I am greeted by another photograph that contradicts my new theory. Most confounding is that this photograph inevitably seems at home alongside the rest of Rødland’s images. I want desperately to explain but can only do so partially, at best.

All words are misfits; only their incongruities can be taken for granted. All metaphors are necessarily inadequate (nothing is precisely the same as anything else). When I tell Rødland that one of his newest photographs stymies me, he responds that I should think of its strangest attribute as “a swear word in a love poem.” Centered in the frame is the bust of a redheaded young man with a chiseled physiognomy; his head appears dense, drawn downward by its own weight. A playing card — the metaphorical swear word — affixed to his forehead immediately breaks my concentration.

“Something on Your Mind” is one of the popular names of this card trick. According to the trick’s logic, the redhead should have “on his mind” the number of the card. My sense, however, is that behind the youth’s impassive face lies little worth hypothesizing about. Reading his mind is not the point, nor is conveying (or even suggesting) his subjectivity the aim of this portrait. A swear word vulgarizes a love poem, demotes it to street level. In the process, perhaps, the poem is redeemed, rescued from disingenuousness, or at least the use of bad metaphors. “Portraiture must be saved from its implied humanism,” Rødland e-mails me. A mood spoiler par excellence, the misfit playing card inhibits undue seriousness.

I Want to Live Innocent, the title of Rødland’s new book published by Steidl, suggests a desire to wipe the slate clean. The statement’s contradiction lies in the notion that wanting might lead to the opposite of wanting: that desire might enable freedom from desire. Thus, portraits are emptied of false insinuations by guileful gestures, rendered innocent by tricks. If this principle of reversal seems overly simplistic, it is. Look again at the redheaded boy, at the sunlight illuminating his curls, at his withdrawn expression. I feel slightly sorry for him but quickly realize the feeling is one of empathy rather than sympathy. The joke is on both of us, it would seem. Rødland’s images are strongly affective, and my inability to manage my own unavoidable emotional response leaves me feeling had, but still wondering whether I have, in fact, been tricked at all. Each photograph has an alibi; together, the images vouch for each other.

Take the atmospheric depiction of the coastline. The view is, no doubt, from Stavanger, Norway, where most of the photographs in I Want to Live Innocent were taken. In this image, the rising sun is interrupted, bisected by cloud cover. Its reflection melts into the water, which is at once placid and seething. Dark weather (though the sky is clearing) and steam (though the fog is lifting) evoke the aura of wonder that often envelops natural disaster. I have the distinct impression that an event is occurring, but its nature remains disturbingly ambiguous. Among the adjectives that fail me are “ominous” and “hopeful,” along with every other adjective I have employed in this paragraph. And yet, waxing poetic seems obligatory — I am again caught in Rødland’s double bind.

“Opposites must never cease to come together.” This aphorism (or axiom?) is one of Rødland’s favorites, and he has put it to me in several different ways during the years I have known him. What interests me most about this paradox is its assertion that opposites exist to begin with — its placement of opposites as originary entities that unceasingly converge. A host of binary oppositions spring to mind: light and dark (Rødland’s previous book with Steidl was titled White Planet Black Heart), beauty and ugliness, surface and depth, innocence and experience. An avid deconstructionist, I have been schooled to reject these sorts of classifications wholesale, but something about the quality of Rødland’s photographs compromises me, draws me back in. I find myself thinking in terms of beauty and ugliness, though I am sometimes confused about which is which. Frequently I become angry with myself for submitting to the seduction. Are Rødland’s images sadomasochistic? Or is this question simply another misplaced attempt to theorize them?

Identifying opposites proves to be a game that can’t be won. The picture of the puppy hunched over the hairy hand might be taken for an allegorical representation of harmony between weak and strong, but whether the puppy is eating from, or retching into, his owner’s cupped palm remains unclear. The devil is in the details. A deceptively obvious opposition is thrown into crisis — who gives and who receives? I want to assign vulnerability, even shame, to one member of the pair, but which one? Clearly, I am projecting. Puppy and owner stand innocent of all emotions conferred upon them. Rødland appears to have forced me to recognize my interpretations as belonging to me and not to the photograph, that clean slate.

No photograph is, in fact, a clean slate. The metaphor fails, as do they all. The diminutive dog cannot but move me on some level. Rødland chose it for precisely this reason. (Surely it moved Rødland, too, when he first caught sight of it.) Baffled by mixed messages, I will accuse Rødland of trickery. Quickly and efficiently, he will furnish proof of innocence.