"This comprehensive mid-career survey features over 70 color photographs and five video installations by the Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. Rineke Dijkstra is organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art."--Publisher's website.

Tall, skinny, short, round, squat, awkward, slouched, tanned, bashful, and sometimes unknowingly beautiful, the adolescents in Rineke Dijkstra's "Beach Portraits" stand alone, the ocean rolling behind them. Clad in little more than bathing suits, these young people are striking to behold. Remarkably clear and formally classical, each subject is frontally posed and shot straight on; the resulting photographs participate in a cold, quasi-scientific categorization reminiscent of the work of August Sander and Thomas Ruff. Yet Dijkstra's pictures are not just that--there is also something of the eccentric in them, something that comes closer to Diane Arbus's images. Seen together, the complete series of 20 "Beach Portraits" creates a kind of collective portrait of the existential insecurity and awkward beauty of youth.

Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959) is one of the most prominent and internationally acclaimed artists working within the genre of photography and video portraiture. Her large-scale photographs show a rare sense of humanity, empathy and intimacy without any trace of sentimentality or indiscretion. Dijkstra typically captures her subjects at moments of transition or vulnerability, thus focusing on the thematics of identity. Though absolutely modern, even timeless, her portraiture brings to mind the great masters of the Golden Age of Dutch art. 'I try to capture something of the personality of these people,' Rineke Dijkstra explains, 'but at the same time extract something universal relating to humanity in general. There has to be enough space to make your own stories; to interpret a picture the way you want.'

Rineke Dijkstra is renowned for her uncanny and thoughtful portraits series of teenagers and young adults: girls and boys of various nationalities at the beach, children of Bosnian refugees, Spanish bullfighters straight out of the arena, Israeli youngsters before and after military service, and here, documented for the first time, her series of photographs taken of aspiring, young ballet dancers. Her subjects are shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background. Formally, the images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds. Yet, in spite of the uniformity in the photographer's works, there is a marked individuality in each of her subjects. Dijkstra often deals with the development of personality as one moves from adolescence to adulthood, or through a life-changing or potentially threatening experience such as childbirth, or a bullfight. Portraits includes the photographer's new Ballet School series.

Artist Rineke Dijkstra has appropriated the formal qualities of the studio portrait from the early part of this century--taking the convention of the full length, frontal and centrally composed portrait to its logical limits, she is able to penetrate to the core of her subjects. Each photograph is marked with a precise date and location, suggesting a conscious evocation of the work of the early 20th century photographer August Sander and his project to document the ''Citizens of the Twentieth Century.'' Dijkstra's photographs stand by themselves, bearing no reference to personal circumstances or the specific geographical details of the location--the power of her images lies in an intimate psychological connection between artist, sitter, and viewer. For Dijkstra's best known series of photographs--an extensive series of beach portraits of teenagers and children taken on beaches all over the world between 1992 and 1996--the artist sought out a certain introversion or unease in her subjects, capturing with rare perfection the human condition of feeling not-at-home in the world. This brilliant new monograph documents Dijkstra's recent photographic and video work.

In an accessible yet complex way, Rebekah Modrak and Bill Anthes explore photographic theory, history, and technique to bring photographic education up to date with contemporary photographic practice. --

Women Photographers and Feminist Aesthetics makes the case for a feminist aesthetics in photography by analysing key works of twenty-two women photographers, including cis- and trans-woman photographers. Claire Raymond provides close readings of key photographs spanning the history of photography, from nineteenth-century Europe to twenty-first century Africa and Asia. She offers original interpretations of well-known photographers such as Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, and Carrie Mae Weems, analysing their work in relation to gender, class, and race. The book also pays close attention to the way in which indigenous North Americans have been represented through photography and the ways in which contemporary Native American women photographers respond to this history. Developing the argument that through aesthetic force emerges the truly political, the book moves beyond polarization of the aesthetic and the cultural. Instead, photographic works are read for their subversive political and cultural force, as it emerges through the aesthetics of the image. This book is ideal for students of Photography, Art History, Art and Visual Culture, and Gender.

Produced in conjunction with the pre-eminent Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, Aperture's essential series Photography Speaks will be reissued as one newly revised and expanded edition in the fall of 2004.

This striking book explores contemporary portraiture from the past decade. The selection features cutting-edge new work from the international art community and reflects an increasing interest in identity worldwide. Organised thematically, the book examines seven key strands of portraiture: The Body; The Self-Portrait; The Invented Portrait; The Anonymous Portrait; Social Identity; The Celebrity Portrait. With an essay by Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, that locates contemporary portraiture within a historic tradition, 21st Century Portraits examines current trends, showcasing the wide range of media today's artists are using. This book includes an extensive bibliography and is an essential reference work in the field of twenty-first-century portraiture. It will present many images to academic, curatorial and general audiences, including museum and gallery visitors and general art book buyers in the trade for the first time.