Last summer I was sitting at the swimming pool to keep an eye on my kids when I spotted these two teenagers. The girl was about 15 years old and she obviously had grown real fast lately. Her arms and legs were long and skinny and she was having trouble to figure out what to do with them. It was clear she was in love but had no idea how to handle this “new” feeling. I was really moved by her appareance and it was fascinating to witness her growing but still shaky self-consciousness.
This fascination with adolescents in search of their identity I also found in the photo’s of Rineke Dijkstra. Especially her magisterial series of Beach Portraits: austere, frontal shots of young people on beaches in the US, The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Gabon and the Ukraine. She concentrated on the moment that a pose just begins to form, or is just being abandoned. Hesitancy and uncertainty are visible and refer to the existential loneliness of adolescents.
Rineke Dijkstra focuses on people in a transitional stage of their life, such as these adolescents and pre-adolescents on the beach in her ‘Beach’ series or women after giving birth in ‘Mothers’, and new recruits in ‘Israeli Soldiers’. Her subjects stand facing the camera against a minimal background and it’s this simplicity which encourages us to direct all our attention towards the isolated person and leaves us moved and a bit uncomfortable by witnessing their vulnerability.
Website: Rineke Dijkstra