The Pregnant Virgin

The Pregnant Virgin takes its title from a Jungian archetype describing a stage of psychological transformation: a condition of carrying something unresolved and contradictory. It uses that archetype as a frame for a new body of Torbjørn Rødland photographs.

Published by MACK in 2023 as a 128-page hardcover, the book continues Rødland's long-running method: bodies, fruit, hands, teenagers and animals photographed with a flat, over-clear lighting that pushes ordinary subjects toward the uncanny. Tenderness and unease sit in the same frame. The sequencing resists narrative resolution, echoing the archetype's own suspended, contradictory state, and extends the psychologically charged formalism that has defined Rødland's photography since the 1990s.

Rødland (b. 1970, Stavanger, Norway) has exhibited at the Serpentine Galleries, Bergen Kunsthall, Kunsthalle Wien and the Astrup Fearnley Museum. He is widely cited as an influence on a younger generation of photographers working between conceptual and vernacular registers. Hudson Street Library also holds Rødland's Fifth Honeymoon, Sasquatch Century, Confabulations and Vanilla Partner; The Pregnant Virgin is a distinct, later title, not an edition or variant of any of them.