Rineke Dijkstra

The work of Rineke Dijkstra is photographically the middle ground between the two photographers Thomas Ruff and Valerie Belin whose work you can see earlier in this blog. The reason why I’ve decided to look at her work is because to me it is the most effective portrait style. Whilst reading her comments about this project she says that she works to show political issues, in this case women and for this she has taken photos that are able to show her target almost perfectly. Very well lit, eye and body facing the camera and framed just below the shoulders really helps to display the person to her audience, as you can see from the two pictures below they are both pretty striking pictures that really capture the person very successfully. I like it, looking at the photographers I have so far I would say that hers is my most preferred working style I’ve seen, as much as I like the work of Belin, her work wasn’t showing the person with any feel as she was showing the face as a mask and I see that as being something I’m going to need to pay attention to. This project doesn’t have an actually backbone, I don’t know if it really needs one however I’m not doing this project for any real purpose apart from artistic and when looking at other portrait photographers they all have a strong reasoning to be doing the pictures in the way they are. This is something that I feel is going to raise it’s head later on and its something that I don’t know about.


The Portrait, Photography as Stage