Girl Pictures
Justine Kurland
Aperture
English
Hardcover
144 Pages
235 x 285 mm
2020
ISBN 9781597114745
The North American frontier is an enduring symbol of romance, rebellion, escape, and freedom. At the same time, it’s a profoundly masculine myth—cowboys, outlaws, Beat poets. Photographer Justine Kurland reclaimed this space in her now-iconic series of images of teenage girls, taken between 1997 and 2002 on the road in the American wilderness. “I staged the girls as a standing army of teenaged runaways in resistance to patriarchal ideals,” says Kurland. She portrays the girls as fearless and free, tender and fierce. They hunt and explore, braid each other’s hair, and swim in sun-dappled watering holes—paying no mind to the camera (or the viewer). Their world is at once lawless and utopian, a frontier Eden in the wild spaces just outside of suburban infrastructure and ideas. Twenty years on, the series still resonates, published here in its entirety and including newly discovered, unpublished images.
(source: https://aperture.org/books/justine-kurland-girl-pictures/#:~:text=outlaws%2C%20Beat%20poets.-,Photographer%20Justine%20Kurland%20reclaimed%20this%20space%20in%20her%20now%2Diconic,patriarchal%20ideals%2C%E2%80%9D%20says%20Kurland.)
About the Artist
Justine Kurland (b. 1969, Warsaw, New York) lives and works in New York. Justine Kurland is known for her utopian photographs of American landscapes and the fringe communities, both real and imagined, that inhabit them. Her early work comprises photographs, taken during many cross-country road trips, which reveal the double-edged nature of the American dream.
justinekurland.com
(source: https://www.miandn.com/artists/justine-kurland#:~:text=Justine%20Kurland%20is%20known%20for,nature%20of%20the%20American%20dream.)
About the Publisher
Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online.
Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,” Aperture today is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. From the base in New York, they produce, publish, and present a program of photography projects, locally and internationally.
aperture
(source:https://aperture.org/about/)
