From Library Journal
Catalog to a show at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, this handsome, pint-sized volume is the first trade monograph available in the United States on one of the most important photographers of her generation. Through portraiture, Dijkstra examines adolescence and our nostalgia for the emotions attached to it as the keystone of contemporary experience. With influences as diverse as August Sander and Diane Arbus, Dijkstra's color portraits of youth on the beach, at school, or in the storage closet of a dance club resound with the awkwardness of the subjects' acute self-awareness of budding personality. The simple beauty of this Dutch artist's vision is matched on every level by its profundity. A meaty and stylish essay by critic Katy Siegel as well as an interview with the artist by curator Jessica Morgan accompany the spare, pristine reproductions. This past year, an image from the well-known beach series was hung at New York's Museum of Modern Art next to C zanne's iconographic bather; happily, this work will give anyone studying the dialog between painting and photography the chance to similarly view Dijkstra's varied oeuvre. Recommended for all art and photography collections. Doug McClemont, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Artist Rineke Dijkstra has appropriated the formal qualities of the studio portrait from the early part of this century--taking the convention of the full length, frontal and centrally composed portrait to its logical limits, she is able to penetrate to the core of her subjects. Each photograph is marked with a precise date and location, suggesting a conscious evocation of the work of the early 20th century photographer August Sander and his project to document the ''Citizens of the Twentieth Century.'' Dijkstra's photographs stand by themselves, bearing no reference to personal circumstances or the specific geographical details of the location--the power of her images lies in an intimate psychological connection between artist, sitter, and viewer. For Dijkstra's best known series of photographs--an extensive series of beach portraits of teenagers and children taken on beaches all over the world between 1992 and 1996--the artist sought out a certain introversion or unease in her subjects, capturing with rare perfection the human condition of feeling not-at-home in the world. This brilliant new monograph documents Dijkstra's recent photographic and video work. Hardcover, 6.25 x 9.5 inches, 129 pages, 50 color illustrations.
