The Hasselblad Foundation announced that it was awarding that year’s Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (approx. EUR 100,000) to Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra. She was due to receive the award at a ceremony in Gothenburg on October 9, 2017.
In addition to a symposium honoring the photographer, an exhibition of her work was scheduled to open at the Hasselblad Center on October 10.
According to the foundation, Dijkstra’s recurring theme of identity enables her to photograph her subjects at moments of great complexity and vulnerability. Her approach to portraying her models, often in series, has also been compared with the rich tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture. By using a fixed camera position in her video work, she keeps the distinction between her video and photography very small.
The Jury
The Hasselblad Award jury that nominated Rineke Dijkstra to the Hasselblad Foundation’s board consisted of:
- Duncan Forbes, chair. Curator and writer in London and Los Angeles, and a temporary research fellow at the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, London
- Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator of Photography, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Simon Njami, curator and writer, Paris
- Esther Ruelfs, Head of the Department of Photography and New Media, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
- Mark Sealy, curator and director, Autograph ABP, London
“The photographs and videos of Rineke Dijkstra brilliantly demonstrate how rich and complex photographic portraits can be. Dijkstra’s photographs embody the eras in which they were made, engage with history, reveal the interplay between subject, photographer, and viewer, and emphasize the power with which photography can convey a personality.
At a time when portraits have increasingly deteriorated into representations of narcissism and fleeting fame, Rineke Dijkstra demonstrates that looking at portraits can also connect people in a powerful way,” said Duncan Forbes, chair of the 2017 Hasselblad Award jury.
“Rineke Dijkstra has built an impressive body of work devoted entirely to portraiture. Her intensive studies of young people’s transition to adulthood are breathtaking. We are also proud that Rineke Dijkstra is the first Dutch winner of the Hasselblad Award,” said Christina Backman, Managing Director of the Hasselblad Foundation.
Source: ANP
