Edited by Michael Juul Holm. Text by Poul Erik Tøjner, Thomas Weski, Hans den Hartog Jager.
With elegance, vulnerability and candor, Dijkstra has created a portraiture style of profound encounter
Rineke Dijkstra is a master of capturing the individual in transition. Best known for her photographs of preadolescent bathers on the beach, she has also produced iconic images of mothers shortly after giving birth, teen soldiers in Israel, bullfighters bloodied after the fight. Dijkstra rigorously maintains a classical format, isolating her figures against stark backgrounds and posing them frontally or in three-quarters view. Within this strict format, the individuality of each sitter makes itself seen in their body’s particularities—the unique way their back slouches, their mouth sets, their hair falls across their eyes. Dijkstra uses a 4x5 field camera—a slow, laborious piece of equipment that creates, in the artist’s words, “a space where things can happen. The people I shoot really have to open themselves up to me. And I have to open up, too. It’s an interaction.”
Rineke Dijkstra: The Louisiana Book offers a retrospective survey of the life and work of the photographer. Scholars introduce her complete oeuvre chronologically in easy-to-read essays, providing information about her working methods and discussing her artistic development. Dijkstra’s best-known bodies of work are represented, including her long-term series of Beach Portraits (1992–2012), in a comprehensive section of color plates.
Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra (born 1959) is known for her stark portraits. She first attracted international attention in the late 1980s for her photographs of club-goers in the Netherlands, but found her breakthrough subject matter in 1992 when she was commissioned by a Dutch newspaper to take photographs exploring the idea of “summertime”—leading her to the renowned Beach Portraits series.
Featured image, "Hilton Head Island S.C., USA, June 27, 1992," is reproduced from 'Rineke Dijkstra: The Louisiana Book.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
L'Officiel
Sara Moroz
Dijkstra's signature is her ability to spotlight subjects intimately, yet completely without sentimentality.
Document Journal
Dijkstra has developed a singular vision of youth, one that no ad agency could conjure, by providing the image as is, free of her nostalgia or yours. One where youth stands on its own two legs, or hunched over, proud, shy or content in its unknowingness.
This 1994 portrait of a Portuguese bullfighter is reproduced from Rineke Dijkstra: The Louisiana Book, the beautiful new retrospective catalogue collecting all of the influential Dutch photographer’s most iconic portrait series. Oversized and exquisitely printed on luxe paper, this 328-page door-stopper is literally mesmerizing. “In their lesser-known Portuguese style of bullfighting, the bull is not killed but pressed to the ground by a team of men,” Hans den Hartog Jager writes. “One of the men is responsible for jumping straight onto the front of the bull—but this role is not assigned until the last minute. Only then does the front man hear that he will soon almost literally be staring danger and death in the eyes. It was these front men that Dijkstra chose to portray, just after they had left the arena. Strikingly, they show almost the same emotions as [new] mothers: a mixture of pride, relief, and exhaustion. The very different source of those emotions seems to make no difference for the picture. Once you’ve stood on the edge of the abyss, it doesn’t matter how you got there.” continue to blog
These two portraits of an Israeli soldier, Evgenya, in civilian dress and in uniform, taken nine months apart in 2002, are reproduced from the Louisiana Museum’s superb new Rineke Dijkstra retrospective. "The power of the series lies in Dijkstra’s subtle but thorough avoidance of cliché,” Hans den Hartog Jager writes. “The girls don’t look especially pained in their regulation army outfits, or especially relieved or liberated at home. Instead, their expressions throughout the series are so inscrutable that the viewer’s gaze seems to bounce right off of them. As a viewer, you realize that your interpretation of the photo says a great deal about your own attitude toward uniforms, freedom, war, and major social dilemmas.” continue to blog
Most people know Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra for her iconic portraits of young people at the beach, coolly staring at the photographer while standing very still in their bathing suits, the ocean always to their backs. And it’s true—there’s something about these unguarded, mostly 1990s photographs that infiltrates the mind, very quietly making them impossible to forget. Other series—including bullfighters, new mothers, Israeli soldiers, and club kids, to name a few—are equally powerful, adding up to one of the most significant bodies of portraiture of the last century and earning Dijkstra the 2017 Hasselblad Award. Pictured here is “Almerisa, Asylum Center Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands, March 14, 1994,” the first in an ongoing series of portraits of a Bosnian refugee. See more in the stellar new
retrospective catalogue from the Louisiana Museum, Denmark.
continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 10 x 13 in. / 328 pgs / 231 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $68.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $90 ISBN: 9783960982166 PUBLISHER: Koenig Books AVAILABLE: 2/27/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR
Published by Koenig Books. Edited by Michael Juul Holm. Text by Poul Erik Tøjner, Thomas Weski, Hans den Hartog Jager.
With elegance, vulnerability and candor, Dijkstra has created a portraiture style of profound encounter
Rineke Dijkstra is a master of capturing the individual in transition. Best known for her photographs of preadolescent bathers on the beach, she has also produced iconic images of mothers shortly after giving birth, teen soldiers in Israel, bullfighters bloodied after the fight. Dijkstra rigorously maintains a classical format, isolating her figures against stark backgrounds and posing them frontally or in three-quarters view. Within this strict format, the individuality of each sitter makes itself seen in their body’s particularities—the unique way their back slouches, their mouth sets, their hair falls across their eyes. Dijkstra uses a 4x5 field camera—a slow, laborious piece of equipment that creates, in the artist’s words, “a space where things can happen. The people I shoot really have to open themselves up to me. And I have to open up, too. It’s an interaction.”
Rineke Dijkstra: The Louisiana Book offers a retrospective survey of the life and work of the photographer. Scholars introduce her complete oeuvre chronologically in easy-to-read essays, providing information about her working methods and discussing her artistic development. Dijkstra’s best-known bodies of work are represented, including her long-term series of Beach Portraits (1992–2012), in a comprehensive section of color plates.
Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra (born 1959) is known for her stark portraits. She first attracted international attention in the late 1980s for her photographs of club-goers in the Netherlands, but found her breakthrough subject matter in 1992 when she was commissioned by a Dutch newspaper to take photographs exploring the idea of “summertime”—leading her to the renowned Beach Portraits series.
