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Hilton Head Island, SC, June 22nd, 1992
Artist
Rineke Dijkstra
(Born 1959, The Netherlands)
Date1992
MediumArchival inkjet print
DimensionsImage: 14 15/16 × 11 13/16 in. (38 × 30 cm)
Framed: 24 × 20 1/16 in. (61 × 51 cm)
Framed: 24 × 20 1/16 in. (61 × 51 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number2014.16
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Rineke Dijkstra
Category
Label TextRineke Dijkstra’s series Beach Portraits, 1992–2002, constitutes a probing and sympathetic representation of adolescence. Exploiting the camera’s capacity to freeze a moment in time, the Dutch photographer traveled to various beaches across the United States and Europe to capture bathing-suit-clad men and women on the cusp of young adulthood.
Each photograph in the series follows the formal conventions of a classical portrait painting, depicting the subject full length, facing forward, and dominating the center of the composition. Dijkstra’s serial method of capturing the young beachgoers recalls the typological approach of the German photographer August Sander (1876–1964). But where Sander sought to produce a national survey of Germany’s stratified occupational types, Dijkstra’s series explores the universal phenomenon of adolescence by documenting individual young people across different nations and cultures, highlighting their singular personalities, eccentricities, and ways of inhabiting their changing bodies. In each location, Dijkstra’s models stand near the threshold of shore and sea—a geographic correlative to their status straddling innocence and experience, awkwardness and self-assurance.
The simultaneous confidence and vulnerability of each young person loom large, a result of each being shot up close and looking directly into the camera. The sharp focus and detail of Dijkstra’s photographs—due to her use of a large-format camera—have elicited comparisons to the portrait paintings of the sixteenth-century Dutch Masters. Following in the tradition of Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and other Dutch predecessors, Dijkstra’s work eschews idealization in favor of images that harness the humanity of her subjects in all their physical, psychological, and spiritual particularities.
Each photograph in the series follows the formal conventions of a classical portrait painting, depicting the subject full length, facing forward, and dominating the center of the composition. Dijkstra’s serial method of capturing the young beachgoers recalls the typological approach of the German photographer August Sander (1876–1964). But where Sander sought to produce a national survey of Germany’s stratified occupational types, Dijkstra’s series explores the universal phenomenon of adolescence by documenting individual young people across different nations and cultures, highlighting their singular personalities, eccentricities, and ways of inhabiting their changing bodies. In each location, Dijkstra’s models stand near the threshold of shore and sea—a geographic correlative to their status straddling innocence and experience, awkwardness and self-assurance.
The simultaneous confidence and vulnerability of each young person loom large, a result of each being shot up close and looking directly into the camera. The sharp focus and detail of Dijkstra’s photographs—due to her use of a large-format camera—have elicited comparisons to the portrait paintings of the sixteenth-century Dutch Masters. Following in the tradition of Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and other Dutch predecessors, Dijkstra’s work eschews idealization in favor of images that harness the humanity of her subjects in all their physical, psychological, and spiritual particularities.