White Planet, Black Heart

Book excerpt: Torbjorn Rodland is to photography what the Pet Shop Boys are to pop: a master of the delicately orchestrated cliche overload, a surcharge of the too obvious, too cute or too inane, played to the point where, drained of all trace of common sense, it suggests a new sense of silence, of mystery. Rodland has a knack for producing images that make you ask what are, in fact, appropriate motives for art photography: Images of single audio or video cassettes? Bleak black-and-white renditions of countryside churches? George W. Bush's favorite ice cream? A black banana? Girls and pets, pets and girls? He creates a complex of readings that inveigles the viewer into spending time with each single image, to reconsider its meaning and relevance. White Planet, Black Heart makes no excuses as it reinvents the romantic impulses of popular culture. This is Rodland's first book.