I Want to Live Innocent

With I Want to Live Innocent, Torbjørn Rødland takes a break from the nomadic lifestyle reflected in his first book and returns to Stavanger, the city he grew up in. He doesn’t revisit old haunts and the images aren’t dominated by the geography of the region but Stavanger becomes a generous theatre for Rødland’s exploration of the incongruous complexities both of his own mind and that of our culture. The centre of Norway’s oil industry, this Protestant coastal city has seen a tremendous economic growth since the late 1960s and Rødland utilises a diverse array of pictorial languages to reflect on the paradoxes which arise with the addition of newfound wealth and materialism.

Publication date: February 2008