The Buzz Club, Liverpool, United Kingdom / Mystery World, Zaandam, PB 1996-97 is one of a series of portraits of young people made by the Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. In 1996 and 1997, Dijkstra asked young people who frequented The Buzz Club in Liverpool and Mystery World in Zaandam, a city close to Amsterdam, if they would allow themselves to be videotaped dancing. She set up an improvised studio in these nightclubs with her subjects posed against a neutral backdrop, while techno and dance music played. Some looked directly at the camera, while others immersed themselves in their dancing. This is one of Dijkstra’s first video works. A year earlier, in 1995, she had photographed young people attending The Buzz Club, this time focusing on their movement. Recording young people in nightclubs captures a unique situation. Away from parental control, they put themselves to the test, evaluate their sexual attractiveness and experiment with their bodies and fashion. They are no longer children, but are trapped in a phase of transformation heavily loaded with social imaginaries around the myth of youth, a stage of self-discovery and rebellion, but also of insecurity and dissatisfaction. As in all her works, Dijkstra demonstrates a great ability to capture moments of fragility and subtle gestures halfway between a conscious posture and unconscious attitude, while simultaneously bringing out the dignity of each individual. As she has explained more than once, it is by focusing on the details that each person’s story is revealed.