The title of this new book by renowned photographer and bookmaker Torbjørn Rødland suggests an artist seeking the divine in his models. If the child in paintings of the Virgin and Child symbolises truth, then the pregnant virgin might represent a temporarily concealed truth: one masked or hidden behind compromised shells and decadent bodies, young and old. The photographs in this striking new collection negotiate surface and interiority, welcoming tensions between contingent reality and archetypes, often uncannily recalling everyday life in intensely physical, obliquely allusive scenes.
 
 
 
Constructed with characteristic precision and an instinct for surrealism and surprise, the sequence draws on symbolism and visual texture in a manner recalling classical "art" photography or religious painting, yet its self-conscious touch gives it a distinctive, elusive charge. With The Pregnant Virgin, Rødland explores analogue photography in dialogue with both online digital culture and visual art from before photography existed as an established medium.