The role of photography in the construction of identity.
An encounter between observing and being observed; detailed colored large-scaled depictions of young persons; the contemplative look of a subject. These are some of the key elements that we find in Dijkstra’s portraits, predominantly in the Beach Portraits series.
The photographer Rineke Dijkstra born in 1959 in Sittard, the Netherlands, became involved with editorial photography after finishing her studies at the Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam. However, various circumstances distanced Dijkstra from editorial photography, and she changed the course of her photographic work. Her self-portrait, taken on June 19th of 1991, announced the beginning of a new exploration of photography and outlined the development of the Beach Portraits series.
Dijkstra’s interests have led her to work almost exclusively with young people. In her photographic projects and her videos, we find kids, teenagers, young mothers, young soldiers, and young adults. Rineke Dijkstra’s photography combines a unique focus on people experiencing a moment of transition with a carefully rendered technical procedure.
“They are adolescents and young adults, young mothers, young soldiers, young toreros. They are at an age in which character traits are gradually beginning to form, in which there are already suggestions of distinctive attributes, but in which the features still make a very bland impression, almost like polished marble. Signs of time and of a personal history are barely visible.”
Dijkstra works with an analog 4×5 inch camera, which allows her to capture finely detailed images emphasizing the composition and the expression. Because the large format camera has no mirrors, the image appears 180° rotated. For that reason, the photographer establishes an interplay between composing the image through the viewfinder and looking at the sitters directly in the eyes to examine their facial expressions. Only then, she takes the picture.
“The interesting thing about this working method is that Dijkstra does not immediately see the final image, unlike a photographer with a digital camera. […] The actual, final image remains elusive, almost Platonic, until the development stage, when the finished photos contain an element of surprise for Dijkstra herself.”
Rineke Dijkstra composes portraits that encourage a contemplative approach. The way she constructs her photographs enhances the detailed observation of the subject; by extension, she pursues the interaction between the spectator/camera/model and the photographer.
On several occasions, Dijkstra has explained how she usually chooses the subjects and approaches the people for her portraits. A decisive requisite for finding the subjects of her pictures is that the photographer identifies herself in a certain way with the person.
First, the selection of the persons to photograph and later, the relationship between photographer/model turns into something noteworthy. The models of Dijkstra’s portraits receive minimal instructions from the photographer, which means that they are who decide how to present themselves in front of the camera.
While Dijkstra is preparing the camera, an interesting interaction takes place. The model is waiting and finding the way to pose and the expression to be conveyed and thus becoming aware of being photographed.
Rineke Dijkstra composes simplified images where the subject is centered in the frame, and elements like background, lighting, and focus work towards emphasizing the portrayed person. In other words, the photographer takes the models out of their location; to some extent, she removes the subjects from their specific surroundings or context and presents them in front of neutral backgrounds.
Rineke Dijkstra works with large or small series of portraits. Some of her projects document a person along a certain period of time as for instance, in the series Almerisa or Olivier. Each of these series consists of several portraits of the same person with a similar, nearly identical composition on each image that allows the viewer to concentrate on the subject and how the course of time is reflected in their depiction.
In contrast, there are other groups of series that deal with distinct topics and portray different persons in the same series, such as Beach Portraits, Tiergarten, or New Mothers. Despite the fact that some pictures are captured outdoors like in the series Tiergarten or in closed, intimate spaces like in the series New Mothers or Almerisa, the use of light in all of Dijkstra’s series plays a decisive role in achieving images rich in color nuances; it could even be argued that these images have painterly features. The use of light in Dijkstra’s portraits has the characteristic of being evenly distributed and diffuse. The photographer herself has expressed the importance of the particular use of lighting in her pictures. Dijkstra explains that she manipulates the light in her photographs, aiming to obtain a “natural” light.
“[…] Of course I manipulate the light. But before I say more about that, I think I’d like to clear up a misunderstanding, which is that a photo is a reliable representation of reality. And I´m not talking about the difference between two and three dimensions, but simply about the difference between what your eye can see and what a camera lens or film can capture. Photos are so accurate, so detailed, that we´re inclined to think that they show us the “real world”. And yet, in reality our eyes see infinitely more than a photo could ever feature. […] Shadows, for example, are more likely to get blocked up on film, whereas highlights are blown out a lot more. That deviation is the main reason why I manipulate things: I want my photos to make you feel that you’re seeing reality the way an eye sees reality. […].”
With the intention to emulate how the eyes see reality, Dijkstra manipulates the light of her images and achieve portrayals that show the subject or subjects over a simple/unadorned, neutral background.
There are nearly no shadows in her portraits. The apparent simplification of the composition and isolation of the subject leads to a contemplative observation; thus, the little details are more noticeable. Dijkstra’s pictures are usually printed and reproduced in large formats; therefore, the viewer can carefully observe each detail of the body, the face, and the expression of the portrayed person.
The Beach Portraits
The Beach Portraits (1992-2002) is the first project produced by Rineke Dijkstra as an autonomous photographer.
The idea for this series began with a portrait that she took of herself in the year 1991. In 1990, after having a severe bicycle accident, swimming was part of Dijkstra’s rehabilitation program training. In the self-portrait entitled Self Portrait, Marnixbad, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 19, 1991 (Fig.1), Rineke Dijkstra presents herself looking exhausted from swimming. In the picture, she is portrayed as she has recently jumped out of the pool. The white-yellowish ceramic tiles surround her and compose the environment of the picture. Dijkstra exposes her emotional/physical state directly to the camera. This picture was the groundwork for the development of the Beach Portraits series.
Beach Portraits is comprised by 18 pictures photographed between 1992 and 2002. For this project, Dijkstra worked with a 4 x 5-inch large format camera with a fill-in flash; both camera and flash were placed on a tripod in order to limit the shadows and contrasts.
Dijkstra’s Beach seriesis made up mostly by individual portraits and, less frequently, group portraits of young people. The series portrays kids and teenagers wearing swimsuits standing on a beach in front of the sea. Rineke Dijkstra took the photographs in various places, such as the United States, Poland, England, Croatia, Ukraine (a.o.). The captions of each depiction document the place, the country, and the date when the photo was taken.
Every picture of Beach Portraits is composed as a long shot frame, capturing the subject from head to toes with only a part of the background visible behind. The photographs have the same arrangement of elements; namely, the model is placed frontal and centered in the frame with the beach as the background; this composition draws the attention to the subject, which is rendered in detail.
The background is reduced to parallel lines showing horizontal patterns of sky, sea, sand, and shells or pebbles. The isolated figure centered in the image builds a strong vertical line, which creates a cross-lines composition and brings balance to the elements in the depiction.
The figures are captured from a low camera angle, thus, while observing the figures, the gaze is slightly directed upwards. The similar, nearly identical backgrounds, rendered in soft focus, emphasize the subject’s presence, and lead the attention to their figure or figures. The large-format depictions enable the exhaustive observation of the skin, hands, hair, clothing, and gestures. In this way, the viewer can contemplate the portrayed persons, get remarkably close (probably even a little closer than an everyday real-life encounter), and scrutinize them.
The way Dijkstra portrays these young persons seems to capture and reveal decisive moments of the sitters, a certain state of unease, a subtle gesture, elusive indecision in their standing, a moment between a pose and a natural state. In this light, it is significant to contemplate that despite the balanced, symmetric composition of the images, what is transmitted through the way the models pose evoke a certain awkwardness and imbalance.
“The austere compositions, almost identical camera placement, the sobriety of the background: these are elements which in a classical manner focus all attention on the person or persons. In their effect they also suggest balance, tranquility and harmony. But the poses inject restlessness; they are somewhat ill at ease, awkward, unfinished and therefore point to a susceptibility; they introduce doubt and uncertainty at a buried level.”
The images of the series provide (visually speaking) just a little information about the environment or the specific place where the shot was taken. Dijkstra seems to erase and avoid all the details that could distract the viewer from the contemplative observation of the person. That means she aims for another kind of interaction between viewer and image, more like recognizing emotions, the imbalance, the process of change, and the sense of being observed.
Beach Portraits inquiries about the self-presentation, the construction of identity, and how the portrayed personas manage the confrontation with the camera. A confrontation that makes them aware of being observed, of being photographed.
“[…] I don’t want a pose in which people comply with a certain image they try to control and that reveals only the intention of how they want to be perceived. What they have naturally is far more interesting to me. I want them to concentrate on being photographed, but I wait for a moment in which they display a certain introversion. […]There has to be a tension in their posture or a gesture that distinguishes them from other people. I don’t look for it in big gestures but in small details.”
It is the whole conjunction of the technical procedures, the chosen environment for the picture, the interaction between sitter, camera, photographer, and the formal arrangement that at the end make the portrayed persons display more of their individualy natural/awkward/ -authentic- self.
The fact that Dijkstra has chosen children and young adolescents for her pictures is crucial because all of them are in a complex process of transition and questioning. Their identity is in the process of construction. In this respect, it can only be falsely claimed that grown-ups already have a static identity, but the process of changing that teenagers go through in their turning into adults is evidently visible, like in these portraits. Taking these ideas into account, one might wonder, isn’t identity a non-ending process of every human being?
It can be argued that Dijkstra’s decision to choose only young people for the pictures lies in the fact that, unlike grown-ups, children and teenagers are openly in the process of creating a specific image of themselves to show to the world. The poses, the gestures, the gaze of the portrayed allow perceiving a certain fragility in them. These young people are searching to compose their images in front of the camera, but their awkwardness and the frontal confrontation with it produce a tension. This tension is enhanced by the formal elements of the composition, the technical procedure, and the format of the reproductions.
The first portrait that I would like to take a closer look at was captured in the United States in the year 1992: Hilton Head Island, S.C., USA, June 24, 1992. (Fig. 2)
In the picture, we find the full-body portrait of a girl at the Hilton Head Island beach. In the background, the horizon line divides the depiction into two horizontal fragments. The upper section is the largest and presents a monochrome blue sky. In the lower section of the image, we can observe the sea and sand depicted with bluish-earth tones. Centered in the foreground, stands the figure of a girl in a full-length view as the central motif of the picture. The girl is depicted in a frontal pose, directly facing the camera; she is in focus, and her figure builds a vertical line in the composition that fills a large part of the frame.
The portrait is captured from a lower vantage point, as aforementioned, Dijkstra applies this technique, which gives the model a certain monumentalized appearance. The portrayed girl has long blond hair; she is wearing make-up, jewelry, and a shiny orange bikini. She has her left hand slightly but also awkwardly placed on her thigh while with her right hand she holds her hair from the wind. Although she is facing the camera, the lower part of her body seems to be almost giving a step backward. The footprints on the sand suggest that she was trying different poses for the picture. The lighting conditions in the image are diffuse and create a blueish atmosphere in the whole portrayal. The atmosphere achieved by the lighting contrasts with the orange color of the bikini, producing a warm/cool color harmony. Dijkstra uses auxiliary light, even for the day and outdoors shots. The flashlight exposes the figure from the front, which is perceptible above all in the reflections of her skin. The employment of a flashlight in addition to the natural sunlight outlines the contours of the girl’s body. There is a certain unease in the girl’s facial expression as well as in her stance. The position of her feet, legs, arms, and hands denotes her intention to pose like a magazine model, but her body posture gives away her nervousness.
“[…] Hilton Head Island, S.C., USA, June 24, 1992, features a girl who, despite Dijkstra’s request that she not wear makeup or jewelry to the session had taken great pains to compose herself as though she were posing for a magazine or advertisement.”
In this portrait, the interplay between the desire for an idealized perfect image and self-doubt is striking, and it is certainly what makes this picture so interesting.
The following picture to be observed is Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 26, 1992.It was captured on a beach in Poland in 1992.(Fig. 3)
Centered and filling a big part of the frame, we find a full-length depiction of a young girl at the beach in this photo. She faces the camera and stands with her green swimsuit on a narrow strip of dry sand. Like a backdrop behind her back, the sky, sea, and sand are reduced to blurry parallel strips. The texture is formed by the clouds in the sky, the little waves, the sea-foam, and the contrast between the smooth wet sand and the irregular dry one. The chromatic of the picture presents a combination of warm earth tones and cooler bluish tones. The chromatic is strikingly accomplished in this and all the pictures of this series; the nuances and the relation between the colors have similar features to painting.
“Rineke Dijkstra herself never says that she has been influenced by painting, and yet her work is often eminently painterly as regards her way of handling colour: the way in which she places her colours, their relationship to one another, the way in which one colour is taken up by another or contrasted by a third.”
Only the girl and the thin strip of sand where she stands are focused by the lens. Thus, the focus and the atmosphere, texture, and chromatic of the background make the subject stand out in the depiction. The girl is wearing a light green swimsuit, her head is slightly tilted to a side, and some strands of her hair flow gracefully with the wind. Like the girl with the orange bikini on Hilton Head Island, the girl in this portrait also has her hand resting on her thigh. Because of the position of her hips and legs, her body posture looks graceful and balanced like a contrapposto. The girl is gazing directly into the camera with a shy but gentle facial expression. The fact that her posture is similar to a contrapposto evokes elegance and harmony. However, it is her shy look that predominates in the depiction.
Comparing both observed pictures, we can see that despite the resemblances in the composition and in the sitters, the difference in how they present themselves is remarkable. Both girls look timid and insecure. This is visible in their body posture as well as in their gestures. However, the way that the girl at Hilton Head Island tries to compose her own image through her make-up, her hairstyle, her jewelry, and her posture is contrasting with the way a girl of her same age in the other part of the world presents herself in front of the camera. Looking back to where both girls live, and the years when both pictures were taken, it can be argued that the difference between the self-presentation of both girls is due to the media influence. Consider for example the socio-political context of both images, namely, the fall of the Berlin wall just three years before these portraits were taken. The way both girls relate to their self-image within this broader context could be indicative of how influential the media is for the self-image building. It is clear that the girl in the USA aims to look like the idealized women she probably watched in magazines. In contrast, the girl in Poland looks shy and insecure but seems not to have such a solid mediatic influence and an idealized image from the media to follow.
The screen, the gaze, and the pose
In order to approach the role that photography has in showing the construction of identity I will employ three concepts developed by Kaja Silverman, namely, the concept of gaze, screen, and pose, which reveal the relational structures involved in the self-image building process.
In the book The threshold of the visible world (2006), Silverman considers a concept developed by Lacan, namely the mirror stage. “In his account for the mirror stage, Lacan paradoxically insists on both the “otherness” and the “sameness” of the image within which the child first finds its “self”. On the one hand, the mirror stage represents a méconnaisance, because the subject identifies with what he or she is not. On the other hand, what he or she sees when looking into the mirror is literally his or her own image. Following Lacan, Silverman understand the construction of one’s self as the recognition of oneself in an alienated reflected image and thus as the intersection between the act of seeing and being seen. By linking this understanding to analysis of visual representations she then goes on to develop the concepts of gaze, screen, and pose, which will serve as interpretative tools for my analysis of Dijkstra’s work
To continue, it is key to briefly clarify the concepts used by Kaja Silverman in The threshold of the visible world (2006).
The screen: In this paper, we will refer to the screen with the definition Silverman provides based fundamentally on Lacan, understanding the screen as a repertoire of representations, a sort of filter, which determines how we see and how others perceive us.
“The screen represents the site at which the gaze is defined for a particular society, and is consequently responsible both for the way in which the inhabitants of that society experience the gaze’s effects, and for much of the seeming particularity of that society’s visual regime.”
The gaze is understood as observing others through this filter, namely through the screen. In this sense, the camera could be a metaphor for the gaze or take its place.
“Not only does the camera work to define the contemporary gaze in certain decisive ways, but the camera derives most of its psychic significance through its alignment with the gaze. When we feel the social gaze focused upon us, we feel photographically “framed.” However, the converse is also true: when a real camera is trained upon us, we feel ourselves subjectively constituted, as if the resulting photograph could somehow determine “who” we are.”
The pose is understood as the act of constituting oneself into an image. “The pose also includes within itself the category of “costume,” since it is “worn” or “assumed” by the body.”
Dijkstra’s Beach Portraits merge around the encounter between the photographer, the picture, and the viewer. Therefore, a particular interplay of observing and being observed is encouraged in this project by the photographer. Furthermore, the concepts of gaze, screen, and pose will be considered as a premise to observe the interaction between the photographer, the portrayed, and the spectator in Dijkstra’s Beach series. As explained by Rineke Dijkstra, when she gazes at her sitters, she finds something from her in them. Thus, she identifies with every model she chooses for her portraits. However, as Silverman points out, the path between the gaze and the observed subject/object always crosses through the screen. On that account, our apprehension of the world is always mediated by the screen, which is culturally influenced. It is essential to clarify that the gaze is not the unidirectional act of looking, but it instead relates to our apprehension of the world, which is therefore always mediated by representation. Considering that the gaze pierces through the cultural repertoire of representations (screen), it leads us to contemplate the notion of idealization or, more specifically, the cultural idealization. In The Threshold of the Visible World, Silverman insists that we all are constantly pursuing the notion of ideal, or as she calls it, the “ever-failing identification with ideality.” Thus, it is significant to reiterate that every society has its representation of “the ideal.” According to Silverman, the notion of the idealization and the idealizing self-images necessarily entails a culturally as well as a physically “deidealization” of the group of subjects who not belong to the “idealized one.”
In the mirror stage, the kids conceive and later identify themselves with the reflected image. This is the starting point of the perception of themselves. Something relatively similar happens with the gaze. While observing, we conceive the “otherness” and the “sameness,” so we can identify with both at a time, and this identification is part of the constitution of ourselves. “The gaze is the “unapprehensible” agency through which we are socially ratified or negated as spectacle. It is Lacan’s way of stressing that we depend upon the other not only for our meaning and our desires, but also for our very confirmation of self. To “be” is in effect to “be seen.” Once again, a third term mediates between the two ends of the diagram, indicating that subject is never “photographed” as “himself or “herself?” but always in the shape of what is now designated the “screen”.”
Considering these ideas from the spectator’s standpoint, it is presumed that when the viewer beholds Rineke Dijkstra’s Beach Portraits, the person is in some way assuming the place of the photographer and, in a certain way, the place of the camera. The spectator sees a representation of the model; nevertheless, the viewer can relate and identify him- or herself with the image, namely with the subject. The connection between the spectator and the image is established again through the gaze, and consequently through the screen as well. This means that the moment the spectators observe the Beach Portraits, they relate to the models through their cultural repertoire. We as spectators recognize the awkwardness, the transition process in Dijkstra’s Beach Portraits, and we can mirror ourselves in the images. First, we conceive them through our repertoire of cultural representations. We seek the ideal image like we are used to for example watching advertising portraits. However, observing these pictures, we identify the state of unease of the portrayed; we comprehend they do not represent the idealized image.
Although the models are not entirely representing this idealized image, they are depicted as such; on large formats prints, with harmonious backgrounds, from a lower camera vantage point (like when we see a statue), idealizing them. But it is by means of the -deidealization- that the interaction between spectator-image-photographer succeeds. The spectators can relate to the state of transition they see in Dijkstra’s subjects through “the attempt to sustain one’s ever-failing identification with ideality” and the never-ending process of the identity’s construction.
This dynamic depicted by the interaction between the photographer and the sitter, and the spectator and the image/sitter, can be further observed in the interaction between the sitter/image and the camera/gaze, guided by Silverman’s concept of pose
As mentioned previously, Dijkstra’s sitters are confronted directly with the camera; their gaze is directed to the lens, and at this moment, they try to compose their self-image through a pose. As explained by Silverman, “through the pose the subject gives him or herself to be apprehended in a particular way by the real or metaphoric camera.” In all the images of Beach Portraits, the transitional state and the tension are visible in the body postures. Many of the models are standing with contained postures that evoke insecurity and awkwardness. Like their emotions were translated into their bodies. They seem to make an effort to look calm and confident but are given away by their stance. According to Silverman, the pose can be understood as a costume or something that is worn or assumed by the body in order to be seen in a certain way.
“The moment the models pose in front of the camera, they are already composing themselves like an image like a representation to be apprehended by the cultural gaze, therefore to be photographed, to be seen. they assume a pose that displays their desire to be perceived in a particular way and this pose “may testify to a blind aspiration to approximate an image which represents a cultural ideal, without any thought as to what that ideal implies.”
Through these observations, we can conceive the importance of images and photography in the construction of identity. People, like the models in Beach Portraits, seem to feel the urge to compose their ideal self-image for the camera. This could explain the power of images and representations in our society, and how to be photographically captured signifies to be observed, therefore being constituted by this gaze.
“Lacan sharply differentiates the gaze from the subject’s look, conferring visual authority not on the look but on the gaze. He, thereby suggests that what is determinative for each of us is not how we see or would like to see ourselves, but how we are perceived by the cultural gaze.”
In Beach Portraits, the self-presentation plays a significant role. The awkwardness and the state of transition of the subjects are evident and contrast with the balanced and harmonious composition of the series.
As discussed in the Beach Portraits, the articulation from the formal and technical characteristics and the interaction between the photographer, the camera, the model, and the spectator are essential features in Dijkstra’s works, through which she composes images that incite a thoughtful observation. It is this ambiguous feature of the portraits that grasps the viewer. There are no answers provided in her portraits, they invite instead to reflect on the interweaving act of seeing and being seen. The spectators interact with the image, assuming the gaze of the artist and the camera, “this explains how, briefly, we can even share the subject’s fate- we can feel looked at by the picture and, in turn, we unequivocally experience what it is like to be looked at by an other.” Rineke Dijkstra composes representations, in which case the mirror image function reveals the encounter between our gaze with the other, therefore the tension of seeing and being seen. In this sense, being constituted by the gaze of others, by the cultural gaze, by the camera/gaze.
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Rineke Dijkstra. The encounter between the photographer, the sitters and the viewer in the Beach Portrait Series.
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