“All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth”*…
Long Island, NY, USA, July 1, 1993. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York & Paris; © Rineke Dijkstra
Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra conceived her Beach Portraits series after breaking her hip. She had snapped some self-portraits at the pool following her physiotherapy sessions, when she realized: “I was fascinated by capturing something unconscious and natural in a photograph, something that was miles away from the boring and predictable businessmen I had until then mostly photographed. I was interested in photographing people at moments when they had dropped all pretense of a pose.”
Jalta, Ukraine July 30, 1993. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York & Paris; © Rineke Dijkstra
More of Beach Portraits here, and an interview with the photographer here. Readers in or through New York City can catch a retrospective of Dijkstra’s work at the Guggenheim starting June 29.
* Richard Avedon
***
As we assume the position,we might recall that it was on this date in 1901 that art dealer Henri-Louis-Ambroise Vollard gave (then) 19 year old Pablo Picasso his first art show; the paintings (largely from the Blue Period) sold well, though at low prices. The exhibition was the start of long relationship between Picasso and Vollard– who had been important in the careers of Van Gogh, Cezanne, the Fauves (Matisse, Rouault, and Derain), Degas, Renoir, and Gaugin. It was Vollard who helped Picasso establish his relationship with collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein, and who built Picasso’s early reputation (by “advertising” a connection between Picasso’s work and Cezanne’s).
Picasso’s “Portrait of Ambroise Vollard” 1910