HARTFORD, CT (PNAN) – Viewing now at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art through February 28, 2023, “Girl Pictures 1997-2002” has been noted as the most celebrated series body of work by Justine Kurland. Started in New Haven, Connecticut, the series tells a fictional story of an empowered community of young women.
Kurland took to the American road on solo trips over five years beginning in 1997 while attending graduate school at Yale University. Living out of a van, the artist befriended various groups of local girls across the country, explained her photographic series, then dressed, staged, and photographed the invented, utopian scenes.
By documenting teenage girls as rebels at play in rustic frontier landscapes, the series offers a feminist recasting of vagabond narratives like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” (1957) in photographs made between Connecticut and California, including New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Colorado, Arizona and Texas among others.
The complete series of 69 works is loosely grouped into themes including camps, tents and forts; animals; balls and games; boy torture; grooming and erotics; rivers, roads, forests and coastlines; and large groups.
Acquired by the Wadsworth in 2022, this monumental series offers a fully illustrated catalogue for purchase. More at www.thewadsworth.org