I caught the Rineke Dijkstra retrospective at the Guggenheim this past weekend... I had seen her work in print a few times, but never saw the large format portraits in person. Most striking to me was her series of adolescent beach subjects, which are probably her most well known works, at least here in the States. I was taken by the awkward stances most subjects assumed, which were often ironically offset with a classical, strangely elegant moment of contrapposto, as they shift their weight to shield either the budding adulthood, or the disappearing child from Dijkstra's lens. She seems to find subject after subject whom all house that absolute moment of child giving way to the emerging adult body, in that clumsy, confusing, awkward stage all humans must endure. The portraits are ethereally lit with textured realism and a slightly glowing surrealism, emanating from the youthful, tentative figures standing at a softly focused, but vast water's edge. The retrospective is up until October 8, 2012. -WW