Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits

by Rineke Dijkstra (Photographer), Hripsimé Visser (Contributor), Urs Stahel (Contributor)

Rineke Dijkstra is renowned for her uncanny and thoughtful portraits series of teenagers and young adults: girls and boys of various nationalities at the beach, children of Bosnian refugees, Spanish bullfighters straight out of the arena, Israeli youngsters before and after military service, and here, documented for the first time, her series of photographs taken of aspiring, young ballet dancers. Her subjects are shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background. Formally, the images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds. Yet, in spite of the uniformity in the photographer's works, there is a marked individuality in each of her subjects. Dijkstra often deals with the development of personality as one moves from adolescence to adulthood, or through a life-changing or potentially threatening experience such as childbirth, or a bullfight. "Portraits" includes the photographer's new "Ballet School" series.

Genres: Photography, Art

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2005

About the author

Rineke Dijkstra is a contemporary Dutch photographer. Known for her single portraits, usually working in series, she often focuses on particular groups and communities of people, such as mothers, adolescent and teenage boys and girls, soldiers, etc., with an emphasis on capturing the vulnerable side of her subjects. “With young people everything is much more on the surface—all the emotions,” the artist observed. “When you get older you know how to hide things.”

Born on June 2, 1959 in Sittard, Netherlands, she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Dijkstra’s seminal series, Beach Portraits (1992–1994), is composed of life-sized color photographs of young teenagers in bathing suits taken on both American and European beaches. The project was shown in 1997 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in New Photography 13, bringing the artist widespread attention and critical acclaim. Dijkstra has gone on to work in video, as seen in her filmed portraits of dancing teenagers, The Buzzclub, Liverpool, UK/Mysteryworld, Zaandam, NL (1996–1997).

She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including “Rinkeke Dijkstra: A Retrospective,” which was shown at both the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2012. The artist currently lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Goetz Collection in Munich, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

Reviews

[Natalie Serber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so inspired by her photographs. She manages to capture power and vulnerability, poise and uncertainty, the emergence of self. She explores "what we don't want to show anymore, but still feel." Dijkstra also expresses the general in the specific. We see ourselves, our neighbors, our children in her bold and clean portraits. What I mean by 'clean' is that she gives us no clues, no accoutrements to infer context or meaning to the lives of her subjects. Whether on the beach or in a room, sitting on a chair, the subject is completely alone. I find her work incredibly moving.

[Bax · Rating 5 out of 5]

cheating here- I didn't actually read the critical text. The first paragraph was larded with enough jargon to gag a billygoat.
but the photos are outrageously great, the reproductions are stellar and it has quite a few I hadn't seen before. A fine core sample of the world of my favorite contemporary photographer.

[Ellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Features beach photos, new mothers (bare skin), chair photos of a gal growing older, bull fighters (torn clothes and bloody), and military photos. Some are before and after-like.