In 1998, the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra was invited to exhibit at the Herzliya Museum of Art in Israel, where she began a new body of work photographing young men and women who had joined the Israeli Defense Force. As military enlistment is required of all Israeli civilians for at least two years from the age of 18, the subjects offer a generalized look at a militaristic society. Dijkstra photographs each enrollee on their first day of enlistment in civilian clothing, and then months later in their military uniforms, documenting a change from adolescence to adulthood that is mandated by government. Dijkstra later photographed from 2000-2003 the enlistment of a French Foreign Legion officer for a series titled Olivier, including moments during intense training in France and Africa and at moments when Olivier was deployed to Gabon, the Ivory Coast and Dijbouti. In all of her portraits, Dijkstra’s compositions recall the styling of 19th century portraits by Vermeer and Rembrandt, in the frontal positioning of her subjects and the life-sized scale of the prints.

For a 2001 exhibition in held at the Art Institute of Chicago, Dijkstra explained “In my work I look for specific characteristics of individual people within group settings. In Israel, I consciously chose soldiers because the army plays such a prominent role in Israeli society. Moreover, military service implies that one has to submit to a collective identity. There is always a tension, however, between the values of the individual and the values of the community. I am interested in the paradox between identity and uniformity, in the power and the vulnerability of each individual and each group. It is this paradox that I try to visualize by concentrating on poses, attitudes and gestures.”[1]