Rineke Dijkstra (*1959)

Rineke Dijkstra, born in Sittard in the Netherlands in 1959, received her first instruction in photography at the Centrum voor Fotografie in Amsterdam, then called the De Moor centre. Portrait photography became her principal interest while she was a student at Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the 1980s. At first she produced photographs of actors, writers, musicians, artists and scientists commissioned by newspapers and magazines. In 1990, in the aftermath of a bicycle accident and subsequent therapy, she decided she wanted her work to reveal people as they ‘really’ are, behind the façade and the posing. The following year, this led to her ‘first attempt to make a “natural portrait,” one based on reality’: she took a picture of herself in a swimming suit and bathing cap after a gruelling exercising session at the swimming baths. Testifying to her exhaustion, the image is free of premeditated posing and facial expressions. It signalled a fresh start in her work and prompted a series of outdoor portraits that continued until 2002. These feature children and young people on beaches in the USA, the UK, Belgium, Poland, Croatia and Ukraine.

Attention is concentrated entirely on the person photographed, who are shown front-on as they stand on the shore in bathing costume in front of the sea and sky: nothing is allowed to detract attention from them. The depth of focus is so slight that the background registers as little more than a kind of coloured shimmering. Beach, sea and sky become standardised, interchangeable areas framing the figure. Positioned centrally and seen slightly from below, the young people acquire a monumental character. Their compelling presence is enhanced by a low horizon, generally below hip-height. The close-up views disclose the smallest details: painted fingernails, a held-in stomach, scratches, blue lips, birthmarks, and so forth. ‘I think that was the first time I realized you can come very close to someone with a camera, that you can see things that in reality you wouldn’t notice.’ Unable to avoid confronting the people in the photographs, viewers are forced to study them closely.  [...]

Source: Masterpieces Kunstmuseum Bern, Ed. Matthias Frehner / Valentina Locatelli, München: Hirmer Publishers, 2016, Cat. No 166, p. 380 (author: Theresa Dann)

This work is one of four photographs by Dijkstra in the collection of Kunstmuseum Bern.