The photobook is am deconstructing is Girl Pictures. The book by Justine Kurland, explores the free world of rebelling teenage girls in both portrait and landscape forms. Kurkland began the project in 1997

Throughout the book we are exposed to changing seasons, perhaps highlighting the changing world of the teenage girls in a chaotic yet peaceful way. The primary subject of Kurland’s pictures are the adolescent girls who inhabit these places, both familiar and uncanny, captured by the artist’s camera. The fact that Kurland’s pictures are carefully staged seems to contradict their intimate, candid quality. Speaking about her work, Kurland has said that she constructs pictures in order to let them unravel, working along a “spectrum between the perfect and the real.”

Girls Pictures by Justine Kurkland, carries a façade from the front cover, Girls Pictures is presented as baby pink hardcover and has an almost ‘inviting’ feeling through the use of flowers and soft colour creating a safe feeling for the book, however what he book holds is rebellious and surprising, similar to how teenage girls look and are expected to be friendly, but in reality, hold a lot more than that good and bad.

Girls pictures is a portrait shaped book with landscape images inside, the images tend to spread over one or two pages per book. The titles of the images are all quite literal e.g. ‘Spinning and smoking (1997)’quite literally shows two girls, one spinning and one smoking this theme of ‘literal’ can also be seen in the title of book ‘girls pictures’ as it is a book of pictures of girls. However, I think these obvious titles are in means to allow the audiences to think more about the image, to see and feel more than what is being stated directly.

Girls Pictures is an obvious story of adventure, Kurkland stated that she took inspiration from adventure stories such as Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Where the Wild Things Are, The Outsiders… However, these stories are all male based. The costumes within the images impact ad change the images completly, placing girls in worn out overalls, ripped jeans The book holds a common theme of rebellion, self-sufficiency, confidence, often having an obvious leader within the groups of girls, perhaps expressing a discourse from the American dream within the use of youth and rebellion.

PHOTOBOOK

Here is a link to my photobook

I believe my final photobook has turned out very successful and clearly relates to my artist references as well as the theme of islandness with a constant theme of nature where it is shown through flowers on the page, the content of the images including night skies, the ocean, trees, and even shadows which I believe this creates a flow through the book- there is another theme through the book which is the colour scheme: images are in a warm to cold colour gradient minus the warm pages before images where green is prevalent on the next page this is so there is some disruption, like the black and white image which breaks up the flow.

Above is my favourite page from my photobook, I feel as if shows the theme of the photobook best where it links childhood/teenagehood with a female gaze, showing the beauty of everyday life. Interpretation of these images imply island life- the sea is obviously extremely prevalent in these images as well as nature- seen in the flower, which could possibly show a more intimate side as the flower has been pressed which can imply it is dear to someone. Actual image content displays a lone female swimmer covering her face which is from an outsider perspective as there is a distance between the subject of the image and the viewer, both images in the book cover one page with a difference in tones of blues in the sea, one image of a rough sea while the other calm (and swimmable) these images together can be used as metaphors where island life is typically either smooth and calm or difficult.