Rineke Dijkstra

In this work, a group of schoolchildren are in a serious discussion regarding the meaning of Picasso’s painting Weeping Woman; however we do not see the painting itself. The children begin hesitantly, apparently answering questions posed by someone off-camera, then gradually begin responding to each other’s remarks. In this three-part work, Dijkstra introduces the spoken word into her work for the first time. To film the scene, she used three cameras on tripods. The children are looking at a reproduction of the painting attached to the middle tripod, hence, none of the youngsters looks straight into the lens. Unlike a conventional portrait in which the subject looks at the camera, they are engaged with each other, visually disconnected from the viewer. Dijkstra’s non-confrontational approach and restrained formal aesthetic allows us to observe the nuances of her subjects’ attitudes and behavior.