Rineke Dijkstra: An Ode to the Teenage Gaze
- Constantine Dranganas
- Jun 10, 2017
- 7 min read
The Female Gaze is a feminist film theoretical term representing the gaze of the female viewer as a response to the male gaze. Laura Mulvey who introduced both theories, argued that the cinematic apparatus of classical Hollywood cinema inevitably puts the spectator in a masculine subject position, with the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire.
How these theories relate to Rineke Dijkstra and her exhibition Rineke Dijkstra: An Ode (20 May - 6 Aug 2017) currently on display at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam? I will come back to that by the end of this post. Let me begin first with a short introduction of Rineke Dijkstra, for those who might not be familiar with her.
Rineke Dijkstra, (2 June 1959 / Sittard, Netherlands) is a Dutch photographer now in her late fifties, who dates her artistic awakening to a 1991 self-portrait. Taken with a 4-by-5-inch camera after she had emerged from a swimming pool - therapy to recover from a bicycle accident - it presents her in a state of near-collapse.
This photo was her ticket to a commission by a Dutch newspaper to make photographs based on the notion of summertime. The result was her first series Beach Portraits (1992) a series of teenagers, framed in all their self-conscience awkwardness, by the blue background of the ocean. Since then, Dijkstra has been redefining portrait photography for over two decades, capturing the awkward honesty of youth and the utter vulnerability of early adulthood.
Overall, her work constitutes of iconic series of portraits such as Beach Portraits (1992), Tiergarten Series (1998-2000), Israeli Soldiers (1999-2000), Almerisa (1994-2005), Olivier (2000-2003), Park Portraits (2005-2006) and video installations including a carefully-rehearsed ballet dance Marianna: The Fairy Doll (2014) and the insecurities and swagger of adolescents on a club night The Buzz Club, Liverpool, UK / Mystery World (1995-1996).
It not surprising then, that she has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (2012) while this year she also acquired the highest honor for a photographer, as she was the winner of the 2017 Hasselblad Award.
Stedelijk Museum that has followed her since the 90's and holds an extensive part of Dijkstra's work, showcases a snapshot of the artist’s photographic and video work (21 photographs and four videos) ranging from 1994 to the present.
Art
At the entrance of the exhibition we come by Annemiek, a colored 4-minute video produced back in 1997. The introduction to the context of the exhibition is awkward, as it is the feeling of the teenage Dutch girl alone before the camera, lip-singing the ballad “I Wanna Be With You” by the popular American teen band Backstreet Boys. The lyrics of this song are quire adult while the girl is clearly very young. This forms a contrast between the text of this love song and the young girl who wishes she could be an adult, but clearly cannot yet.
This awkwardness transforms into laughter, sparks of imagination and pure innocence as we move on to the next large video installation (3 videos) entitled ‘’I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)’’. This 12-minute video produced at Tate Liverpool (2009) deals with the analysis of Picasso’s famous painting The Weeping Woman, by a group of school children from Liverpool. Their questions, statements, dialogues, body and facial gestures, create a testimony to the wild imagination of young children as they stare on an abstract expressionistic artwork. A lesson on observing and getting loose into this observation.
Next to that, we see Ruth, a teenage girl isolated from the previous group, on her attempt to draw Picasso. Ruth Drawing Picasso (2009) resembles a portrait of concentration. By capturing the poses and gestures of Ruth, this very personal and esoteric process of drawing, becomes a spectacle for others to see. An absorbed teenager in front of a masterpiece and a camera.
Video gives its place to photography, as we move on to the next gallery, where we see some of Dijkstra’s most iconic photographic series. Starting with Olivier (2000-2003) Stedelijk shares with the audience the journey of a 17-year-old young boy named Olivier Silva, during his first three years as a soldier for the French Foreign Legion. Dijkstra met Olivier at the very beginning of this journey and through her images we see how in only three years this boy is transformed into a stern-looking man. This images function as imprints of time on a story of metamorphosis, lost innocence and growing up.
Other series to be found on the exhibition include Park Portraits (2005-2006), with Dijkstra capturing teenagers at Berlin’s Tiergaten park in extreme concentration as they play and at Vondelpark Amsterdam posing as if they were part of a classical painting.
Moreover, Mothers (1994) and Bullfighters (1994-2000) are two series presented together since 2003. Linked by Dijkstra and the many curators who have followed her lead, these contemporaneous series beg comparison especially in light of Dijkstra’s contention that these men and women exhibit particular but parallel responses to exhausting and life-threatening actions. Females wounded hours after they have given birth, a sign of female power as mothers of life, in contrast to males wounded while fighting with a bull, as a sign of male superiority and power.
The exhibition continues with three portraits from her series The Krazy House (2008). We see Amy, Nicky and Megan, three British teenagers as captured in a nightclub. Next to them, inside a dark room, it feels as if you enter The Buzz Club in Liverpool, UK back in 1995-1996, which on the same context as the previous images, deals with the social behavior of teenagers in nightlife. Chewing gum, dancing, smoking and sipping beer on a continuous transition between extreme self-assuredness and tender self-doubt.
On the same dancing note but colored with a layer of pink this time, we see Marianna [The Fairy Doll] (2014). This video installation puts the viewer inside a ballet teaching class where we find Marianna, a young Russian girl rehearsing a series of dance moves, under the instructions of her teacher, for her audition at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. This video generates mixed feelings to the viewer, taking into the account the competitiveness and level of difficulty of this dance genre, an equivalent of being an athlete. There are moments that Marianna smiles and others that she stands still, emotionless.
Institute
Stedelijk takes advantage of its wide space to exhibit Dijkstra’s work, following the buzz of her Hasselblad award win. According to Hripsimé Visser, Curator of Photography at Stedeljk Museum, this exhibition was clearly designed now, in order to make the way to the reception of the Hasselblad award by Dijkstra the following October.
Stedelijk manages to create a cohesive exhibition and a story line, by dividing the exhibition into clear themes related to Dijkstra’s work, which showcase the wideness and importance of her artistic practice.
A follow up of this exhibition is arranged for later this year, when Stedelijk will present Dijkstra’s series Almerisa (1994-2008) a series of portraits that follow the life of a young Bosnian refugee girl from her arrival in the Netherlands to her adulthood.
Society
For the Dutch society, this exhibition is of educational and national importance.
Educational because it gives adults and teenagers the opportunity to reflect upon themselves, make connections and observe teenagers under the prism of Dijkstra’s documentations of their decisive esoteric moments.
National because of the nationality of Dijkstra being one of the most recognized and appreciated international Dutch photographers.
This exhibition could inspire younger Dutch and internationals to get more involved with photography and photographers to understand what makes her work so unique, taking into account also the influences on her work from the society that she grew up in.
Visitors
If you are a photography lover, with a clear interest on portraits, this is definitely a must-see exhibition if you are in Amsterdam. Stay aware though, that the exhibition will not blow you away by its spatial design or means of presentation, since its rather a ''white cube'' style designed exhibition.
However, the works displayed in combination with the text an audio information, will provide you with enough topics to think upon, reflect and discuss during and after your visit. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to see the original artworks of a Hasselblad Award Winner which is definitely not something that you see every day.
Epilogue
Coming back to the beginning of this post, I referred to the male and female gaze in the context of film. The reason why, is because I believe that Rineke Dijkstra is the photographer and ambassador of a different kind of gaze both on video and photography, which I like to call the Teenage Gaze.
By that I mean, that through her work she clearly analyses the relationship between the viewer and the viewed through the eyes of a teenager. How we see our body changing as we move from puberty to adolescence, how we see others that have the same or different age of us, how they see us and overall how we perceive the world in this transition from kids/teenagers to adults, are clearly themes enclosed within Dijkstra’s work.
The Teenage Gaze is something not entirely new though. Among others, Toronto-born photographer Petra Collins on her 2014 series The Teenage Gaze captured young girls and dreamy suburbs, as a way to present young girls that are struggling for freedom to express their sexuality and the end of censorship for female body, girls who want to have fun on their own terms.
Rineke Dijkstra, a descendant of master photographers like August Sander and Diane Arbus succeeds to introduce a new way of seeing via the Teenage Gaze. A way which is not limited to kids/teenagers, but to all those who are capable to understand and bring back to memory the very essence of being young in this state of in-between, with the struggles, awkwardness, fears, impatience, passions and limited freedom on making your own choices as a human being.
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