There is no shortage of these images circulating around the internet, but coming face to face with them is another matter. At the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Rineke Dijkstra’s “Beach Portraits” take center stage in a focused exhibition of photographic work by the Dutch artist. It is definitely not the scale of the prints that sets this exhibition apart. Many works here are modest, almost small, compared to the oversized formats that elevated photography, physically and monetarily, to the stature of painting in the 1990s. This is no larger-than-life show. Although the three larger portraits undeniably make a striking impression, the gaze of the smaller photographs is equally unavoidable.
Perhaps the difference lies simply in discovering these portraits in real space, close to each other, allowing for similarities and differences to emerge. A multitude of individuals come together here: adults, adolescents, children, and every stage in between, from different parts of the world, shot roughly between 1992 and 1997. Each figure stands in front of an undefined beach whose exact coordinates are only revealed by the title of the artwork. These beaches include several eastern European cities, like Jalta and Odessa in Ukraine, and Kolobrzeg in Poland, with subjects captured during the turbulent years following the fall of the Iron Curtain. Behind them stretches an indistinct sky, functioning almost as a studio backdrop.
Many of the young protagonists wear swimwear that makes them look even more vulnerable. Their eyes meet the lens of Dijkstra’s large-format analog camera. It is a serious, sometimes almost adult look that several of those portrayed cast at their audience. Other postures and looks may be interpreted as uncertainty, determination, melancholy, or a growing self-awareness. Sometimes you can almost feel how immediacy and staging wrestle with each other –– in the photograph, in the individual person. There is some posing happening, especially on beaches in the United States and in Europe, but we are still in the pre-internet era, just before it became completely common to determine your own image on a massive scale.
The exhibition also includes the photographic spark that inspired the “Beach Portraits” series: a 1991 self-portrait Dijkstra took at Marnixbad, an indoor swimming pool in Amsterdam she visited frequently while recovering from an injury. Naturally, the sky is not there yet.
This new presentation of Dijkstra’s photo series aligns with the Städel Museum’s recent ambition to explore universal and allegorical themes in contemporary art, as seen in its previous exhibition of Muntean Rosenblum’s paintings. The same exhibition space, with its reflecting mirror walls (a permanent installation by John M. Armleder), now showcases Dijkstra’s portraits. These images, carefully composed but not completely staged, could form a hinge to the museum’s collection, particularly works by old masters.
Do Rineke Dijkstra’s beach portraits stand the test of time? Indeed, the Dutch photographer’s famous series appears strangely fresh today, just as it must have appeared when it was created in the early ’90s. As a photographic body of work, the “Beach Portraits” is certainly a crystallization of a specific moment. And, of course, viewing the photographs today, we see that moment in retrospect: the fleeting stages of childhood and adolescence; the 1990s, a decade that suggests lost innocence, especially to younger audiences; not to mention Ukraine, which appeared to have been on the brink of a brighter future — though the advent of hyper-capitalism after communism came as a shock as well. But there is also something more universal at play here. Apart from a few fashion-specific references that clearly place their wearers in a particular decade, Dijkstra’s “Beach Portraits” appear almost out of time and place.
