Rineke Dijkstra - Prix Pictet

24/03/2023, 18:29 Rineke Dijkstra | Prix Pictet
Contacts
Rineke Dijkstra Almerisa
https://prix.pictet.com/cycles/consumption/rineke-dijkstra 1/17
Almerisa, Asylumseekerscenter Leiden, March 14, 1994. Contacts
Almerisa documents the transition in a girl’s life, not only showing her adjustment to
a new culture, but also the way she tries to find herself by experimenting with
different modes of outward appearance.
Contacts
Wormer, June 23, 1996.
Contacts
Wormer, February 21, 1998.
Contacts
Leidschendam, December 9, 2000.
Contacts
Leidschendam, April 13, 2002.
Contacts
Leidschendam, June 25, 2003.
Contacts
Leidschendam, March 29, 2005.
Contacts
Leidschendam, March 24, 2007.
Contacts
Zoetermeer, January 4, 2008.
Contacts
Asylumseekerscenter Leiden, June 19, 2008.
Contacts
Artist's Statement
Dijkstra met the subject of what would become her longest-running series to date while making portraits
at a refugee centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. Five years old at the time, Almerisa arrived with her family
from Bosnia (by way of Austria and Germany) just two weeks earlier.
Dijkstra prepared a small, bare studio with a chair in the corner of the room where the girl was staying. In the resulting image,
with her brightly coloured Bosnian-chic dress, straightforward pose, and direct, intense gaze, Almerisa offers striking contrast
to the empty beige walls and floors that surround her.
In each of the next ten images, Almerisa is centred in the middle of the frame and shown seated against a wall or window in a
neutral area of the place she was living at the time of the portrait. Typically made one or two years apart, each photograph shows
how Almerisa’s appearance changes with her adjustment to Dutch culture. From a shy Bosnian girl she grows up to be a young
Western woman who wears the right branded clothes and fashionable make-up. But Almerisa is also a girl who needs these
clothes and make-up to build up her own image, her own self, just as she sees everyone else doing, around her as well in the
omnipresent Western media (and she keeps doubting about wearing shoes in the house – Bosnians don’t).
Taken as a whole, Almerisa documents the transition in a girl’s life, not only showing her adjustment to a new culture, but also
the way she tries to find herself by experimenting with different modes of outward appearance. In the most recent image, the
young girl from the beginning of the series sits confidently as an adult with her own child on her lap; a boy she has with her
husband who’s originally from Surinam. The cycle of life starts all over again.
About the author
Contacts
Born
1959, Sittard, Netherlands
Nationality
Dutch
Based in
Netherlands
Rineke Dijkstra was born in Sittard, The Netherlands in 1959. She attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam from
1981-1986. She has been honoured with the Citibank Photography Prize (1999); the Werner Mantz Award (1994); and the
Kodak Award Netherlands (1987) among others.
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 colour photographs and videos mainly of 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. From the Beach Portraits of 1992 to the video installation BuzzclubMysterworld (1996-
1997), Tiergarten Series (1998-2000), Israeli Soldiers (1999-2000), and the single-subject portraits in serialtransition: Almerisa
(1994-2005), Shany (2001-2003) and Olivier (2000-2003), the focus and strength of her oeuvre has been capturing what is both
uniquely personal and universal about her subjects. More recently, Dijkstra has built upon her revelatory work in video from the
mid-1990s. In The Buzz Club, Liverpool, UK / Mystery World, Zaandam, NL (1996–97), and The Krazyhouse (Megan, Simon, Nicky,
Philip, Dee), Liverpool, UK (2009), Dijkstra filmed teenage habitués of local clubs dancing to their favourite music. Two video
works made in 2009 at Tate Liverpool expand the artist’s interest in the empathetic exchange between photographer and subject
to include the affective response to artworks. In I See A Woman Crying (Weeping Woman) (2009), a group of school children engage
with art, discussing their perceptions and reactions to a work by Pablo Picasso, while Ruth Drawing Picasso (2009) shows a girl
pensively sketching a masterwork.
Rineke Dijkstra was recently the subject of a mid-career retrospective on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2012). Other recent solo exhibitions include a 2005-2006 tour of Rineke
Dijkstra, Portraits, which was on view at: Galerie National du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Fotomuseum, Winterthur; Fundacio la Caixa,

Rineke Dijkstra - Prix Pictet

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rineke Dijkstra - Prix Pictet

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

24/03/2023, 18:29 Rineke Dijkstra | Prix Pictet

Rineke Dijkstra Almerisa

Almerisa, Asylumseekerscenter Leiden, March 14, 1994. Contacts

Wormer, June 23, 1996.

Wormer, February 21, 1998.

Leidschendam, December 9, 2000.

Leidschendam, April 13, 2002.

Leidschendam, June 25, 2003.

Leidschendam, March 29, 2005.

Leidschendam, March 24, 2007.

Zoetermeer, January 4, 2008.

Asylumseekerscenter Leiden, June 19, 2008.

About the author

1959, Sittard, Netherlands

You might also like