Prague, CZ - Rineke Dijkstra documents people in transitional moments: mothers shortly after giving birth, young people entering the military, matadors still bloody from a bullfight, young club kids just off the dance floor, and preadolescent bathers on various beaches in the United States and Eastern Europe.  Formally, her images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds.  Despite their uniformity, however, Dijkstra's pictures deftly expose the emotional state of her individual sitters.  Although she isolates the subjects in her Beaches series (1992–96) and frames them with only sea and sky, the artist reveals much about them by capturing a subtle gesture or expression in these unguarded moments that reside somewhere between the posed and the natural.  In photographing the already awkward young subjects in their bathing suits, Dijkstra sets up a situation marked by a self-consciousness that parallels the uneasy passage between childhood and adulthood.

To accompany the exhibition, the publishers Schirmer und Mosel have issued a volume of over eighty photographs by Rineke Dijkstra and commentary by Urs Stahel, the director of the Winterthur Museum of Photography, and Hripsimé Visser, the photography curator of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.  In the Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague, the exhibition will last to 27 August 2006.

Rineke Dijkstra solo exhibitions: ‘Rineke Dijkstra/Bart deBaere’, Time Festival; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Gent, Gent; ‘RinekeRineke Dijkstra Dijkstra/Tom Claessen’, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam (leaflet) Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam; The Photographer's Gallery, London ; Galerie Jan Mot en Oscar Van Den Boogaard, Bruxelles; Folkwang Museum, Essen.

Galerie Rudolfinum would like to thank the Mondriaan Stichting, Amsterdam and the Royal Netherlands Embassy, Prague for their support for the exhibition and is also grateful for the support of the Philips Česká republika s. r. o. and Rezidence Lundborg, Prague.

Visit Galerie Rudolfinum at : http://www.galerierudolfinum.cz/