Overview / biography

Based in Amsterdam, Dijkstra frequently travels in order to find her subjects. The Beach Portraits were made on beaches in Belgium, Croatia, England, Poland, Ukraine and the United States. They are photographs of children and adolescents, posing singly or in groups of two or three. Mostly they appear in swimwear; occasionally they are more fully dressed. The diversity of places and nationalities reflects a difference in wealth and therefore quality of clothing; the subjects’ poses likewise range between the apparently self-assured and an awkward self-consciousness. The subjects’ intense gaze towards the camera is a constant. For each photograph, Dijkstra selected her beach location carefully, set up her camera and then approached her subjects, inviting them to assume a pose of their choice in front of the lens. In all the portraits, the camera is positioned low in relation to the subject and the landscape, resulting in a downward gaze and large expanse of sky. Dijkstra has commented:

I have a preference for introverted people because I feel an affinity with them and therefore I can look at them longer than I do at exuberant people, who are very much focused on their surroundings. I like a particular kind of face, very classical and therefore timeless – the girl in the green swim suit in Kolobrzeg, for example. It’s about a particular kind of beauty that other people might find ugly, but it’s a kind of ugliness that I find beautiful.
(Quoted in Rineke Dijkstra 1997, [p.38].)

Dijkstra has cited August Sander (1876-1964) and Diane Arbus (1923-71) as important influences on her work. Adolescents, on the threshold of a developmental rite of passage, and adults who have recently undergone a highly charged emotional experience are her preferred subjects, as in her portraits of women who had recently given birth, Julie, Den Haag, Netherlands, February 29 1994, Tecla, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 16 1994 and Saskia, Harderwijk, Netherlands, March 16 1994 (see Tate P78097-P78099). Dijkstra has explained that these people display a vulnerability which allows the photographer to capture ‘what Arbus said ... “the gap between intention and effect”. People think that they present themselves one way, but they cannot help but show something else as well. It’s impossible to have everything under control.’ (Quoted in Portraits, p.76.)

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dijkstra-kolobrzeg-poland-july-26-1992-p78330

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FINAL MAJOR PROJECT

Rineke Dijkstra (artist study)

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