PHOTO:Rineke Dijkstra- An Ode
Rineke Dijkstra has developed an impressive body of work focusing exclusively on portraiture. Her close studies of the transformation of young people into adults are captivating. Rineke Dijkstra is the recipient of the 2017 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. The award ceremony will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden, on October 9/10/17.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Stedelijk Museum Archive
Rineke Dijkstra’s solo exhibition “An Ode” is on presentation at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with 21 photographs and four videos. The exhibition is a snapshot of her work ranging from 1994 to the present, including iconic photographs, early video work and her return to the medium in recent years. The exhibition also premieres three works that have never been displayed in the Netherlands. Shown for the first time in the Netherlands are: “Marianna (The Fairy Doll)” (2014) “Marianna and Sasha, Kingisepp, Russia, November 2 2014” (2014) and “Odessa, Ukraine, August 6 1993” (1993). Her large-scale photographs and films often focus on children, adolescents, and young adults, offering subtle explorations of the formation and representation of identity. Rineke Dijkstra pursues an existential photography, but one that encourages us to focus on the exchange between photographer and subject and the relationship between viewer and viewed. Among her earliest work from the early ‘90s is a series of photographs depicting mothers and their newborn children moments after the delivery, as well as portraits of bullfighters directly after leaving the ring. In these works, Rineke Dijkstra aimed at capturing contradictory emotions: exhaustion, joy, fear, relief – experienced simultaneously in extreme circumstances. In the series “Beach Portraits” (1992–2002), she portrayed children and teenagers on beaches in Eastern and Western Europe, and the USA. As they are standing in front of her large format camera, she poignantly reflects their vulnerability and self-awareness during a period of transition from children to adolescents. A notable characteristic of Rineke Dijkstra’s oeuvre is her long-term projects, photographing the same people over several years, witnessing the changes as well as the distinctive traits in their personalities. The most noted and still ongoing of these projects started in 1994, when Rineke Dijkstra encountered and photographed a six-year-old Bosnian girl named Almerisa Sehric in a Dutch refugee center for asylum-seekers. She has continued to photograph Almerisa every few years, documenting her transition into a teenager, then a young adult becoming a part of Dutch culture, and eventually becoming a mother. The series “Olivier” (2000-03) visualises another kind of physical and psychological development, namely that of a young man becoming a soldier from his enlistment with the French Foreign Legion through his years of service. Since the mid-‘90s, Rineke Dijkstra has expanded her unique modes of portraiture to video, offering sensitive studies of young people. Video works such as “The Buzz Club, Liverpool, UK/Mystery World, Zaandam, NL” (1996-97), and “The Krazyhouse (Megan, Simon, Nicky, Philip, Dee), Liverpool, UK” (2009), show teenagers from local clubs dancing to their favorite music in multi-channel video installations. Two video works “I See A Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)”, and “Ruth Drawing Picasso” (both 2009), focus on children’s attentive response to artworks. In more recent video works from 2014, Rineke Dijkstra has filmed girls rehearsing at a Russian gymnastics school or auditioning for the prestigious Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, portraying humanity in beauty, and perfection.
Info: Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, Duration: 20/5-6/8/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri 10:00-22:00 www.stedelijk.nl
