Playground, 1998

Aperture is pleased to release this limited-edition print from Justine Kurland in support of her forthcoming monograph, Girl Pictures. Proceeds from the sale of this print support the publication of the book. 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 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 Twenty years on, the series still resonates, published here in its entirety and including newly discovered, unpublished images.

Pigment Print
Image Size: 20 x 24 inches
Paper Size: 24 x 28 inches
Edition of 20
Signed and numbered by the artist

Justine Kurland (b. 1969, Warsaw, New York) received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1996 and an MFA from Yale University in 1998. She first acquired public attention with her work in the group show Another Girl, Another Planet (1999) at Van Doren Waxter Gallery in New York. Kurland’s photographs unveil neo-romantic landscapes of youth occupied by girls. Her work is in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; and International Center of Photography, New York, among other institutions. Kurland’s monograph, Highway Kind, was published by Aperture in 2016, and Girl Pictures in 2020.