Yet within the narrow boundaries of her work, Ms. Dijkstra probes as deeply into the confusing, often hurtful process of adolescent socialization as any realist in contemporary art or literature. Attentive to what posture, hairstyle, body type and clothes (an exposed bra strap or a ratty swim suit) say about a person's self-assurance, class and a nation's economy, she is especially solicitous of kids forced to take on adult roles they may not be ready for.
Her rapport with these young women and men, and her almost maternal affection for their vulnerabilities, can be seen throughout the midcareer retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Organized by senior photography curator Jennifer Blessing (jointly with SFMoMA's Sandra S. Phillips), the installation is far from ideal. Visitors have to traverse four floors to see the 70 photographs and five videos. Luckily, the path the 53-year-old artist has walked is easily followed through the Guggenheim's eccentric spaces.
Ms. Dijkstra dates her artistic awakening to a 1991 self-portrait. Taken with a 4-by-5-inch camera after she had emerged from a swimming pool—therapy to recover from a bicycle accident—it presents her in a state of near-collapse. She believes the camera detected something hidden about her mental state that a more composed shot would have missed.
A print of this, the only self-portrait here, can be found on the fourth floor, and it is strikingly smaller than her "Beach Portraits" that followed soon after. For this 1992-2002 series, installed on the second floor, she photographed teenagers along the shorelines of the U.S. and northern Europe. The backgrounds of water, sand and sky are so unspecific they might have been photo-shopped. (They were not, as she eschews digital manipulation.)
Ms. Dijkstra focuses on the monumental gawkiness of her young subjects, on the distinct physiognomies and swimwear fashions to be seen among, say, Poles and Americans in the years after the fall of Communism. Among the conclusions to be drawn from her melancholy view of vacation escapes is that, for some, nothing is as unnatural as stripping down to enjoy nature.
Ms. Dijkstra's body of work presents mostly white Europeans. An exception are her photographs of Israeli soldiers—women and men. Though she tries to find the individuals inside the uniforms, they defeat her curious gaze.
She excels in more familiar and relaxed surroundings. Her 11 portraits of a refugee from Bosnia named Almerisa, whom she met at a Dutch asylum center, use the simple prop of a chair in a room to chronicle the child's growth from 1994, when the feet of the 5-year-old don't touch the floor, to 2008, when the child has become a 19-year-old mother, comfortably seated and holding a child of her own. The series may be, as the catalog suggests, about the assimilation of a war orphan into Dutch life. But it is also about Almerisa's unwavering self-possession, which Ms. Dijkstra could have discovered only over many years.
Other subjects seem to have had a tougher time fitting in. In the poignant 1997 video "Annemiek (I Wanna Be with You)," Ms. Dijkstra's camera studies a girl trying to sing along to a record by the Backstreet Boys. The worry lines in Annemiek's brow suggest the girl thinks she is a failure. Ms. Dijkstra's tightly framed piece sympathizes. It also acknowledges the painful fact that success at imitation—lip-synching is an apt metaphor—can be vital in growing up and joining society.
A 32-minute, four-wall video installation on the seventh floor—of five English teenagers dancing to techno against a blank screen—furthers this theme. The initial bravura of each performer, as he or she relishes the chance to be showcased, soon gives way to tentative shrugs and shimmies as a limited repertoire of moves is exhausted. They haven't learned enough about how others dance to solo for very long.
Ms. Dijkstra has imitated a stellar list of artists—August Sander, Diane Arbus, Thomas Ruff, Judith Joy Ross, Sally Mann, Thomas Struth—in forging her style. The off-kilter stances of Paul Cézanne's bathers informed her "Beach Portraits"; the lush green shade enfolding Edouard Manet's and Claude Monet's picnickers can be seen in her "Parks" series. Ms. Blessing's essay cites Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests" as antecedents for the videos, while Ms. Phillips's essay mentions Rembrandt as a source for Ms. Dijkstra's psychological acuity.
These disparate role models have produced a uniquely compassionate formality. There is nothing offhand about her approach. At the same time, she allows humor and imperfection (stray hairs, bent collars) to undercut investigations that might be too earnest without them.
Two videos from 2009 offer another original take on the social experience of art. In one, a class of English children offers fancifully dissonant responses when asked to describe Pablo Picasso's "Weeping Woman" at the Tate Modern; in the other, a schoolgirl seated on the floor at the museum draws a Picasso on her sketchpad.
The first video is clamorous, with overlapping answers; the second is silent except for the scratching of a pencil. Although in neither case do we see what the students are looking at, our effort to construct the painting through their eyes and words is involving. Without an acquired appreciation of art to temper their thoughts, children have only a raw familiarity with homegrown distress to explain why a woman in a picture would burst into tears.
Ms. Dijkstra is an artist of solid achievement. Her images of people at the start of their adult lives, channeled through a set of crafty filters, are like the opening paragraphs in a short story that may or may not end badly but that she compels us to keep reading. By RICHARD B. WOODWARD Mr. Woodward is an arts critic in New York.
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