Justine Kurland is another person who has inspired me to do one of my photoshoots and her book Girl Pictures, she has inspired me to take photos in a similar style as hers, she shows feminism is a beautiful and majestic way, her photos also show youth within females as she shows girls running through fields and making daisy chains, things children did when they were younger.

Justine Kurland (American, b.1969) is a Contemporary Fine Art photographer who is known for her large c-print tableau pictures of childhood secret places and wastelands. She was born in Warsaw, NY, and graduated from The School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA in 1996.

Kurland has become famous for her landscapes dealing with young children, men, and women, often mixing the purity of youth with its unbridled wildness. These works of feral and unsupervised children running amuck in a suburban wasteland formed the basis of her book Spirit West in 2000. She has traveled across the United States to create these staged photos, including to Virginia and California, but spent many months traveling through New Zealand as well. Her photos of utopian-esque communities in Virginia and California earned her solo shows in London and Vienna. Kurland is very in touch with nature and the primal impulses of humanity. In 2004, the book Old Joy explored men in the wilderness often unclothed as they experienced the true mystery of nature.

Kurland uses natural daylight to capture her photos and the visual element of her photographs make her photos look like they are taken on film due to the colour and the graininess of the photos, her photos are bright and almost include an aspect of nature in them.

The idea behind her photos are to include aspects of freedom and liberation within femininity

Many females look up to Justine Kurland and her work on girl pictures because of the relatability in an interview she says “The whole idea of this series was to have this imaginary place of protection for these girls.” and for many girls they don’t have a safe place so for the idea or thought of having one is comforting for them there for her work is a breath of fresh air and relatable. Kurland also believes and says that ‘to prove that this alternate fantasy life is real because it’s part of all of the other images that we’re navigating through”.

The image above shows the freedom and release of pressure that the people in the image have you can tell this buy the laid back and relaxed posture of the females, Kurland used natural lighting in this image as she is outside, this photo was taken on a cloudy day you are as the sky has a whit cast and is not blue this impacts the image due as is would have decreased the actual vibrance of the setting and wouldn’t have captured and the bright colours that there would have been, however the element of it not being bright makes the views this that it is like that for a reason and i could represent that there is something overpowering the image from being bright some views may believe it shows that the male patriarchy is still overpowering women and putting a dull cast of femininity.

My Interpratation