Rineke Dijkstra

“Rineke Dijkstra sees something more in her pictures than the people who are photographed. She sees people who, in the light of the camera flash, choose an identity and express it through poses, faces and outfits. Sometimes the real person is glimpsed. It is the gap between how people are and how they want to be that interests Rineke Dijkstra. /…/ The installation came about when Dijkstra set up film cameras at two techno clubs, one in England and one in Holland. The cameras were placed in separate rooms behind the dance floor. Some of the club visitors were invited there to be filmed while dancing. The visitors stand alone in front of the camera, some dance wildly, some get nervous. A girl is shy and quiet at first, then gradually gains ground and self-confidence and starts dancing. Another with a punk hairstyle is though and dances concentratedly until a little smile appears.”

Translated quote from DN, 1999-01-15, Rebecka Gunnarsson. Read full text in Swedish.

“Clothes, hairstyle and make-up are carefully selected to be ‘right’ for the evening. Clearly aware that they are being filmed, each pose seems to be a statement. The uniformity in age and context makes the teens’ conformist pursuit of non-conformity, to say the least, noticeable. But just like the beach portraits, the moving portraits in ‘The Buzzclub, Liverpool, UK/Mysteryworld, Zaandam, NL’ are about something more elusive. Not least about the boundary between young and adult, so clear in the simultaneously challenging and insecure gestures, a mixture of a well-learned presentation of oneself and that which seeps through, that which does not quite match the desired image. Like when one of the cool twins chewing gum stared straight into the camera for several minutes and then, for a second, turned his gaze to his brother and laughed. But the most interesting thing is probably to study one’s own reactions to the images, as a viewer. Dijkstra simply makes it difficult to attribute a simple identity to people, and we are left with our performances hanging freely in the air.”

Translated quote from DN, 1999-01-22, Milou Allerholm. Read full text in Swedish.