Kolobrzeg, Polen, 26 juli 1992

In Kolobrzeg Dijkstra captures a moment in which a girl’s awkward, lanky limbs fall together in a classical elegance. The pose is reminiscent of Botticeli’s Venus and, with that, has a timelessness that crosses borders. Rineke Dijkstra’s series of beach portraits follows a strict formal vocabulary. The figures usually stand alone or in groups of two or three. They are positioned centrally and frontally in the picture plane. Dijkstra wanted to remove extraneous detail, thus working on an empty beach with a vast seascape along the horizon. This adds to the ageless quality of her images. Dijkstra’s photographs of adolescents highlight the vulnerability of these half-formed adults, who are left physically exposed in bathing attire. Additionally, her subjects’ openness is read in the stance they hold in front of the camera. The combination of large negatives with a fill in flash allows for extremely sharp, almost hyper-real, and detailed images.