Book Description
Tall, skinny, short, round, squat, awkward, slouched, tanned, bashful, and sometimes unknowingly beautiful, the adolescents in Rineke Dijkstra's Beach Portraits stand alone, the ocean rolling behind them. Clad in little more than bathing suits, these young people are striking to behold. Remarkably clear and formally classical, each subject is frontally posed and shot straight on; the resulting photographs participate in a cold, quasi-scientific categorization reminiscent of the work of August Sander and Thomas Ruff. Yet Dijkstra's pictures are not just that--there is also something of the eccentric in them, something that comes closer to Diane Arbus's images. Seen together, the complete series of 20 Beach Portraits creates a kind of collective portrait of the existential insecurity and awkward beauty of youth.
Essays by Carol Ehlers and James Rondeau.
Foreword by Thomas C. Heagy.
Hardcover, 10.25 x 13.25 in. 72 pages, 20 color illustrations
About the author
Rineke Dijkstra was born in 1959 in Sittard, the Netherlands, and lives and works in Amsterdam. She has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Venice Biennial; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Photographers Gallery, London.
