Rineke Dijkstra Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Rineke Dijkstra
Dijkstra in 2011
Born	(1959-06-02) 2 June 1959 (age 66) Sittard, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Education	Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Notable work	Beach Portraits, Almerisa, Olivier, The Buzzclub, Daniel, Adi, Shira, and Keren, Rishonim High School, Herzliya, Israel
Awards	HonFRPS

Rineke Dijkstra (born June 2, 1959) is a famous photographer from the Netherlands. She lives and works in Amsterdam. She is known for taking amazing pictures of people. Rineke has won many important awards for her photography, like the Hasselblad Award in 2017.

Early Life and Learning
Her Photography Work
Art Exhibitions
- Major Solo Shows
Awards and Honors
Art Collections
See also

Early Life and Learning

Rineke Dijkstra was born on June 2, 1959, in Sittard, a town in the Netherlands. She went to art school at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. She studied there from 1981 to 1986. After school, she worked as a commercial photographer. She took pictures for companies and their yearly reports.

Her Photography Work

Rineke Dijkstra mostly takes pictures of single people. She often creates a series of photos. This means she takes many pictures of the same person or group over time. She has photographed teenagers, people at clubs, and soldiers.

Famous Photo Series

Beach Portraits: This series started in 1992. Rineke took full-length, almost life-size color photos of teenagers. She photographed them standing by the water's edge. These pictures were taken in different countries like the United States, Poland, and Ukraine. The photos show the teens looking directly at the camera. They often have a simple background of the sea. This series made her very well-known around the world.
Almerisa: This project followed a young girl named Almerisa. Her family had to leave Bosnia. Rineke photographed Almerisa about every two years. The first photo was taken in 1994 when Almerisa was six. The last one was in 2008. This series shows how Almerisa grew up. It also shows her journey as she moved from Eastern to Western Europe.
Olivier: This series (2000–2003) follows a young man named Olivier Silva. He joined the French Foreign Legion. Rineke photographed him as he served in different places. The photos show how he changed physically and mentally into a soldier.
Israeli Soldiers: In this series (1999–2003), Rineke photographed a young Israeli woman named Shany. She took pictures of Shany at different times over a year and a half. Shany is shown when she first joined the army. She is also shown in her uniform and later at home after leaving the army.
Park Portraits: For this series (2003–2006), Rineke photographed children and teenagers. They were in parks in cities like Amsterdam, New York, and Madrid. The photos show them pausing their activities to look at the camera.

How She Takes Photos

Rineke uses a special camera called a 4x5 inch view camera. She puts it on a tripod. She also uses a flash on another tripod behind her subjects. Even when she photographed children on the beach, she used this setup. The flash helps to reduce strong shadows. It also makes the faces stand out. However, natural daylight is always her main light source.

Video Art Projects

Rineke Dijkstra has also made video art.

The Buzzclub, Liverpool, UK/Mysteryworld, Zaandam, NL: For this project (1996–1997), Rineke visited two nightclubs. One was in Liverpool, England, and the other in the Netherlands. She set up a small studio in each club. She asked young people to dance one at a time in front of the camera. The videos show how confident and also how shy the teenagers were.
Ruth Drawing Picasso: In this video (2009), Rineke simply filmed an English schoolgirl. The girl was sitting on the floor at the Tate Liverpool museum. She was carefully drawing a portrait by the famous artist Pablo Picasso.
I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman): For this video (2009–2010), Rineke showed a group of schoolchildren a painting by Picasso called The Weeping Woman. The painting itself never appears on screen. Instead, Rineke filmed the children as they described what they saw in the painting.

Art Exhibitions

Rineke Dijkstra's photographs have been shown in many art exhibitions around the world. Her work has been part of major art events like the Venice Biennale in 1997 and 2001. She has also had solo exhibitions. This means shows that only feature her work.

Major Solo Shows

In 1998, her work was shown at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
In 2001, she had exhibitions at the Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands and the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel.
From 2005 to 2006, a traveling exhibition called Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits was shown. It went to places like Jeu de Paume in Paris.
In the United States, she had solo shows at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001.
A big exhibition of her work, called Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective, was put together in 2012. It was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. This show included more than 70 color photographs and 5 video works.

Awards and Honors

Rineke Dijkstra has received many important awards for her photography:

1987: Kodak Award, Netherlands
1994: Werner Mantz Award
1998: Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize)
2011: Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London
2012: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society
2017: Winner of the Hasselblad Award, which is a very important photography prize.

Art Collections

Rineke Dijkstra's work is kept in the permanent collections of many famous museums. This means her art is owned by these museums and can be seen there. Some of these museums include:

Rineke Dijkstra facts for kids

Contents