women, gender and rineke dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch artist interested in photographing subjects in new and profound ways. She is one of the main artists I decided to research because of the amount of photographs she made that focused on women of all different types of ages, sizes and races. In this sense, her artwork is a feminist act in which she showcases women as they are, without any sense of commodification, oversexualization or expectations placed on them. Feminism is about accepting people as they are, without seeing any one person as better. In this piece, the subject is a female dressed in a black bathing suit, with an anklet on, her medium length dark hair. The artist does not reveal much, but at the same time, she reveals the girl’s self consciousness in the way that she is posed. In this series, the people are gazing directly at the audience. These young subjects are almost bare, showing themselves to the audience. It seems as though there is no camera in front of them. There is nothing in between the audience and the young woman.
According to the Guggenheim Museum,
"Rineke Dijkstra was born in Sittard, the Netherlands, in 1959. She studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1981 to 1986. Through the late 1980s, she photographed people in clubs for magazines in the Netherlands and worked for corporations as a portraitist. In 1990 she injured her hip when her car was struck by a bicycle. A selfportrait produced during her rehabilitation, in which she is seen having just emerged from a pool, exhausted, sparked a new direction in her work."
Her color photography is an example in which her subjects are the sole focus of the photo. In her Bathers series, she shoots young men and women and places them against an isolated beach backdrop. There is nothing blurry in this photograph, the girl is completely in focus. Everything is completely defined. The background colors are muted; there is a strong contrast in the dark and light colors. She is exactly in the middle of the frame, as if there is an invisible symmetrical According to the Guggenheim, she was "Commissioned by a Dutch newspaper to make photographs based on the notion of summertime, Dijkstra took provocative photographs of adolescent bathers. These ultimately formed her breakthrough Beaches series (1992–96), which featured her young subjects in different locations in the United States and Europe. From this point on, people in transitional moments would be a major theme in her work."
It is clear that when one looks at her work, she is a true portrait photographer. She captures
people as they have just finished something like swimming in the beach. She captures the youthfulness of these young adults. For this instance, their adolescence is forever.
The image can be seen here: http://i0.wp.com/www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/1993/01/98.5232_ph_web.jpg?w=870
Works Cited
http://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/rinekedijkstra
According to the Guggenheim Museum,
"Rineke Dijkstra was born in Sittard, the Netherlands, in 1959. She studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1981 to 1986. Through the late 1980s, she photographed people in clubs for magazines in the Netherlands and worked for corporations as a portraitist. In 1990 she injured her hip when her car was struck by a bicycle. A selfportrait produced during her rehabilitation, in which she is seen having just emerged from a pool, exhausted, sparked a new direction in her work."
Her color photography is an example in which her subjects are the sole focus of the photo. In her Bathers series, she shoots young men and women and places them against an isolated beach backdrop. There is nothing blurry in this photograph, the girl is completely in focus. Everything is completely defined. The background colors are muted; there is a strong contrast in the dark and light colors. She is exactly in the middle of the frame, as if there is an invisible symmetrical According to the Guggenheim, she was "Commissioned by a Dutch newspaper to make photographs based on the notion of summertime, Dijkstra took provocative photographs of adolescent bathers. These ultimately formed her breakthrough Beaches series (1992–96), which featured her young subjects in different locations in the United States and Europe. From this point on, people in transitional moments would be a major theme in her work."
It is clear that when one looks at her work, she is a true portrait photographer. She captures
people as they have just finished something like swimming in the beach. She captures the youthfulness of these young adults. For this instance, their adolescence is forever.
The image can be seen here: http://i0.wp.com/www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/1993/01/98.5232_ph_web.jpg?w=870
Works Cited
http://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/rinekedijkstra
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