The European Biennial of Contemporary Art

28 June 31 October 2014

St. Petersburg, Russia The State Hermitage Museum

Rineke Dijkstra

Study with Marianna at Children’s Ballet School of Ilya Kuznetsov

Rineke Dijkstra, Study with Marianna at Children’s Ballet School of Ilya Kuznetsov, 2014.
Courtesy the artist.

Born 1959 in Sittard, Netherlands
Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Rineke Dijkstra worked as a formal portrait photographer until the early 1990s, when she began to develop her own approach to the genre. Her series Beaches (1992–96)—photographs of adolescents in their bathing suits on beaches ranging from Ukraine to the USA—garnered international attention. Dijkstra usually creates series of portraits, presenting models of all ages and a range of occupations. Her photographs seem to capture moments of surprising vulnerability in their subjects. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1997, 2001), the São Paulo Bienal (1998), and Turin’s Biennale Internationale di Fotografia (1999). Solo exhibitions have been held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2012), the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2005), and the Art Institute of Chicago (2001), among other venues. Her many awards include the Kodak Award Nederland (1987), the Werner Mantz Award (1994), and the Macallan Royal Photography Prize (2012).