Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits (Hardcover)

~ Rineke Dijkstra (Photographer)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Rineke Dijkstra is renowned for her uncanny and thoughtful portraits series of teenagers and young adults: girls and boys of various nationalities at the beach, children of Bosnian refugees, Spanish bullfighters straight out of the arena, Israeli youngsters before and after military service, and here, documented for the first time, her series of photographs taken of aspiring, young ballet dancers. Her subjects are shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background. Formally, the images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds. Yet, in spite of the uniformity in the photographer's works, there is a marked individuality in each of her subjects. Dijkstra often deals with the development of personality as one moves from adolescence to adulthood, or through a life-changing or potentially threatening experience such as childbirth, or a bullfight.

Portraits includes the photographer's new Ballet School series. In the end, it's the individual that I'm after.

--Rineke Dijkstra Essays by Urs Stahel and Hripsimé Visser. Hardcover, 9.75 x 13 in./160 pgs / 69 color.

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 Biennale; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Photographers Gallery, London."

"Urs Stahel, born in 1953, is the director of the Winterthur Fotomuseum and the editor of a number of publications on photography. He lives in Zurich."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: D.A.P./Schirmer/Mosel (April 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933045183
• ISBN-13: 978-1933045184
• Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 10.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #622,422 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The truth is startling, November 2, 2005

By	wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This series of portraits is very plain in many ways, but contains some striking images. The cover photo is an example - it took me a moment to realize that the model had just come back from wading.

Other pictures have that same double-take effect, including a mother and child series of nudes. Each is a full-length, frontal (almost confrontational) view of the woman holding her new baby, just a few hours old. Baby cuteness takes some time to develop, more time than these children have had in the world. The mothers haven't had time to recover, either, still stretched but no longer filled. They hardly match either conventional beauty or the romanticized vision of motherhood. That line of blood down the inside of one woman's leg isn't very romantic at all. It's just very true. This series of photos, more than any other I can think of, keeps me coming back to look again, and to see the pictures a little differently each time.

Many of the photos in this collection did very little for me. That's probably a good thing. If the whole set had the density if its most demanding images, it would have created its own gravitational field.

//wiredweird

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you can't see the large photos displayed at an exhibition get this book, November 9, 2005

By	Papagena Robbins - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This afternoon I saw an exhibition of 30-40 of Rineke Dijkstra's portraits at the Stedlijk museum in Amsterdam, and I was very affected by it. The photos seem so simple and innocuous at first glance, but it only takes a second to find what Barthes called a "punctum" (a subjectively conspicuous detail that takes you out of the frame into some, mostly likely ineffable and personal, truth of life, and establishes a direct connection between you and the subject in the photograph) in each one. Most often it is found in the subtlest of details in Dijkstra's photos, or between the photos as montage effect surfaces while moving through one of her series. Innocence and gritty reality seem to engage in a dialectic relationship throughout these works.
"Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits" contains an excellent sampling of Dijkstra work. If only it was 2, 3, or 4 times the size! but then, I suppose, it would be much to expensive for a student like me. In actual fact, the photos in this book are certainly large enough to be appreciated.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits, January 10, 2007

By	LKL - See all my reviews

This book is a must have to reference a comprehensive collection of Rineke Dijkstra's work. The plates are 9"x12" with excellent color reproductions and the write-ups go beyond the regurgitated art critic articles.