Maya, Induction Center, Tel-Hashoner, Israel, April 12, 1999, c-print, 49.6 x 42.5 in (126 x 108 cm)
Rineke Dijkstra’s beautiful and unsettling portraits of individuals in transition—early adolescence, childbirth, and initiation into military life—are brought together for the first time in this show of seventy photographs and two video pieces. The exhibition starts with Dijkstra’s beach pictures of teenagers from the early ’90s and climaxes with her recent studies of a young Frenchman entering the Foreign Legion and Israeli teens turned soldiers. These portraits, for some of which Dijkstra followed her subjects for several years, convey a poignancy that is mirrored in her video portraits of young club-goers dancing for the camera.
