Rineke Dijkstra

Since the early 1990s, Rineke Dijkstra has produced a complex body of photographic and video work, offering a contemporary take on the genre of portraiture. Her large-scale color photographs and videos, which focus mainly on young, typically adolescent subjects, show subtle, minimal contextual details and encourage us to focus on the exchange between photographer and subject and the relationship between viewer and viewed.

Dijkstra was born in Sittard, The Netherlands in 1959; she attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam from 1981-1986.  She has been honored with the Johannes Vermeer Prize (2020), Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2017), SPECTRUM, International Prize for Photography of Stiftung Niedersachsen (2017), and The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (1999). Rineke Dijkstra was the subject of a traveling mid-career retrospective at Museum De Pont, Tilburg, the Netherlands (2018), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2017), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2012). 

In 2013, the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) Frankfurt presented the first comprehensive filmic retrospective of her work as a global premiere. In 2019, she premiered her video installation Night Watching in the Gallery of Honour of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In 2023 the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris presented a solo exhibition of her video works.

A 2005–2006 tour of Rineke Dijkstra, Portraits was on view at Galerie National du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Fotomuseum, Winterthur; Fundacio la Caixa, Barcelona; Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam; and Rudolfinum, Prague. Additional solo exhibitions include Rineke Dijkstra: I See a Woman Crying at Tate Liverpool (2010), Ruth Drawing Picasso at Museu Picasso, Barcelona (2017), Rehearsals at Milwaukee Art Museum (2016), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2016),  Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2014),  and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2014).