Coney Island, New York, 1993 Please note this photograph is unique, printed before the editions of six and fifteen C-print, mounted on aliminium, framed, signed, titled, dated juni 1993 in pencil on the backing 49 by 38 cm. Provenance Stichting Beeldende Kunst, Amsterdam Sale, Amsterdam, Sothebys, 21 March 2006, Lot 232, illustrated, where acquired by the present owner Literature H. Visser, Portraits Rineke Dijkstra, Amsterdam 2004, pp. 20, 21, illustrated J. Medvedow, Portraits Rineke Dijkstra, Boston 2011, p. 41, illustrated D. Smith, Rineke Dijkstra The Photographers Gallery, London 1997, illustrated U. Eskildsen, Rineke Dijkstra Menschenschilder, Essen 1998, pp. 12, 13 illustrated (R) Rineke Dijkstra acquired international fame thanks to her impressive portrait series. In the early 1990s she began with work on the magisterial series of Beach Portraits, austere, frontal shots of young people on the beaches in the United States, The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Gabon and the Ukraine (the former Soviet Union). In this series Dijkstra concentrated on the moment that a pose just begins to form, or is just being abandoned. Hesitancy and uncertainty are visible in the bearing and glance and refer to the existential lonliness of adolescents. The surroundings, limited only through the framing, the somewhat low camera angle and the use of a fill-in sharpen the often strongly culturally defined details and reinforce the monumental character of the images. Photographs from this series are included in many national and international museum collections, as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The major travelling exhibition Rineke Dijkstra was to be seen in Paris, the new photography museum in the Jeu de Paume Winterthur, Fotomuseum (March 11 - May 22, 2005), La Caixa in Barcelona (June 4 - August 21, 2005), at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam until February 6, 2006 and more recently, in 2012, a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisico and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
