Left to right: Kolobrzg, Poland, July 26, 1992; Coney Island, NY, USA, June 20, 1993; Hilton Head, S.C., USA, June 24, 1992. From Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective, courtesy the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Reinke Dijkstra, whose mid-career retrospective opened at the Guggenheim Museum last week, is truly a photographer’s photographer. Driven from a young age to break the mold (her father enrolled her in a teachers college) she took up photography, shooting with a 4 x 5 camera from the outset. After studying at the GerritReitveld Acadamie in Amsterdam (1981-1986), she worked as a commercial portrait photographer. She soon became restless and bored by these pictures, which were mostly of self-conscious businessmen who had no desire to be photographed.

The tipping point came in 1991 when her hip was shattered in a cycling accident. After being laid up for months she began a grueling physical therapy program that included lap swimming. One day she set up her camera at the pool and made a self-portrait immediately following a particularly exhausting session. Dripping wet but defiant, she presents herself exactly as she was at the moment the shutter opened. A small print of this image, included in the show, signals the photographer’s future work--hypnotic and sympathetic large-scale portraits that in effect created a new form of photography, rooted in Dutch traditions, that refers to to Vermeer and Rembrandt. “I’m really interested in photographing common people,” she says. “It’s in my genes.”

On vacation in South Carolina a year later, she photographed young people on the beach. The simple setup, with bands of sand, water and sky forming a backdrop for the standing figures, belies the complexity of these genre-bending images. Her objective in making the portraits, she says, was “to capture the particular moment when that person is ultimately themselves.” Photographing young people appealed to her because, “They have no defined image of themselves yet."

The time and preparation that goes into these images becomes evident in a portrait of a blond girl wearing a glamorous orange bikini, with jewelry and makeup to rival a Miss Teenage America contestant. She is encircled by a sea of footprints in the sand that suggest many tries at getting her pose right. By then, the fidgeting is over and she has dropped her guard. As Dijkstra says about her highly structured method of achieving naturalness, eventually "people become aware of the fact that they're posing and fall back on their own resources.”

Dijkstra continued this series at beaches from the Ukraine to Poland over the next decade. She also photographed Portugese bullfighters, dazed and bloodied as they left the ring; young inductees to the Israeli Army; a young man named Oliver Silva whose metamorphosis from soft-faced teen to steely warrior she captured over his three-year stint in the French Foreign Legion. Among the most affecting portraits are a series of eleven Dijkstra made of Almerisa, a Bosnian refugee who she photographed from childhood through motherhood. In this emotionally sensitive series Almerisa emerges from a timid uncertainty to lovely self-awareness; the only thing that is constant in the series is the chair on which she sits.

In addition to the over 70 mostly large-scale color photographs are several videos, which Dijkstra began shooting in 1997. Standing before a fixed camera against a plain white background, teen clubgoers at Liverpool’s Buzz Club self-consciously sway to the music as they smoke and sip beer, sometimes lip-synching the words. For their age they are surprisingly alike except for one girl in a white dress with midriff-revealing cutouts. As she begins dancing to the music she embraces the camera's eye, gets into a groove, and loses herself to a state of ecstasy. “What I like in younger people is that everything is potential,” says Dijkstra. “You don’t know which direction their future will take. But I think a good portrait doesn’t just give answers—it also asks questions.”

On Tuesday, July 17 at 6:30 pm, Rineke Dijkstra will be joined by Paul Graham, the 2012 Hasselblad Award winner, to speak about shared artistic concerns and distinct critical practices in image making. Moderated by Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography. Tickets $10/$7.

Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective continues through October 8^th at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Avenue at 89^th Street, NY, NY.