De Panne, Belgium, August 7, 1992

Within the past decade, the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra has emerged as one of the most significant contemporary artists working with photography. Like other prominent artists of her generation-including Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Ruff-Dijkstra works primarily in color and on a large scale, producing photographs with a powerful sense of presence and a crystalline clarity. What sets her apart from her contemporaries is her abiding fascination with human subjects in states of transition or transformation. She has photographed matadors moments after they leave the arena, adolescents on the brink of adulthood, women cradling their newborns-approaching each of her subjects with respect, attentiveness, and compassion.
This photograph belongs to Dijkstra's celebrated series of full-length portraits of teenagers on various beaches in Poland, Croatia, the Ukraine, Belgium, England, and America. Made between 1992 and 1996, these photographs beautifully encapsulate her interest in liminal states, conveying the poignant intensity of adolescence with startling eloquence. Dijkstra has a gift for revealing the eternal within the everyday, and she imbues her portraits with an elemental, almost mythic quality that seems to transcend the carefully observed particulars of national identity and class.