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‘Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.’

-Susan Sontag- On Photography

Girlhood is an idea that has material effects on how childhood is understood and lived, how gender is created and experienced and how identities are constructed. These are all related to the idea of a ‘girl’ which will never fully be achievable as that varies in many ways, more then ever in nowadays society. From the 1640s, “girl” could also mean “sweetheart.” Usually we would relate that word to romance and love; this suggests girls are affectionate. We often think of age as a key determinant of girlhood, immediately relating the word to childhood however, this alone is more complicated. Does girlhood end with adolescence? Defining girlhood is so challenging, it is a social and cultural construct, suggesting that different societies often construct their own unique meaning of girlhood. I think that is what makes it so wholesome.

I have chosen this area of research because I want to project and represent with photographs my childhood and what it was like for myself growing up as a girl. Girlhood is about learning and growth, self-discovery, finding who you are and showing other people that; this is why I want to capture images that express these emotions.

Justine Kurland and Julia Margaret Cameron both present girlhood in their work, however, in very significant ways. Kurland’s being in a soft, fairy-tale- like way of runaways being free through environmental, landscape images; and Cameron’s is presenting original, powerful women through close-up portraits. In this essay I intend to create an understanding of Justine Kurland work from her book ‘Girl pictures’ and Julia Margaret Cameron’s work from her book ‘ Julia Margaret Cameron’s women’ and compare the way they present girlhood.

Justine Kurland’s most successful project, ‘Girl Pictures’ book is an enduring symbol of romance, rebellion escape and freedom. It captures pictures of teenage girls taken between 1997 and 2002 on the road in the American wilderness. Kurland said she “staged the girls as a standing army of teenaged runaways in resistance to patriarchal ideals,”. She portrays the girls as fierce, free fearless and compassionate.

‘Every teenager is a teenager pretending to be a teenager.’

Kurland was born is Warsaw, New York in 1969. Her parents weren’t around so Kurland and her sister lived a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. Only at the age of 15, Kurland ran away to Manhattan to live with her sympathetic Aunt , and decided to focus on becoming an artist. From there, she graduated from The School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA in 1996. She received her MFA in 1998 from Yale University in Connecticut. Now she has become famous for her landscapes dealing with young, feral unsupervised adolescents in suburban wasteland settings. Often mixing the purity of youth with its unbridled wilderness, Kurland has travelled across the united states to photograph these staged images.

Justine Kurland created ‘Girl pictures’ based on her own childhood experiences, her images almost foreshadow herself; she uses both childhood adventures and current experiences to influence her working style and subject matter. She channelled the angry energy of girl bands into her photographs of teenagers. The first girl Kurland ever photographed was the daughter (age 15) of the guy she was dating at the time. She preferred her company to his. After he left for work in the mornings, they conceived a plan to shoot film stills starring the girl as a teenage runaway. The only surviving picture from the time shows her in a cherry tree by the westside highway:

She hovers pinkly between the river and the highway, two modes of travel that share a single vanishing point; portraying the flowing theme of fleeting moments of adolescence and its fearless protagonists in her work.

Kurland’s surreal images evoke pagan utopias or post-apocalyptic worlds. Her work is fairly modern to nowadays, based in the 2000s. The girls in their baggy jeans and bare feet. The girls in their leather boots and used sweaters. There’s something about them that feels like so many teenage girls. Personally there is an aura in this book of Kurland’s that feels relatable and nostalgic to my own childhood.

The theme of girlhood throughout Kurland’s work is obvious, however, I have decided to choose these two specific images from ‘Girl pictures’ to analyse. As I spoke about a the start of this essay, we often use age to determine the meaning of girlhood, immediately relating it to childhood; although, I personally believe girlhood is an idea that can be with you forever. These two images infer that perfectly. The image on the left displays three young girls, they appear to be playing in what looks like their garden if not then a rural environment. As a young child it is always exciting to be free to adventure wherever you want. You have imaginary tasks and make up games with your friends, no rules jut fun. Kurland has captured this image of them playing in the flowers and nature having no cares. On the other hand, the image on the right shows three older teenage girls also sat in a field, eating ice cream. The image almost foreshadows the one on the left, implying that the younger girls will still be able to have that sense of girlhood in older years of their life. I can analyse this from these images as in the image on the right, there is cars and a petrol station, an environment that you wouldn’t find young children on their own, in the background; I can guess they have stopped off on a road trip ( again, suggesting these girls are runaways). In the image on the left the girls are purely in an open field, a safer setting for younger children. Kurland has taken these images strategically.

Taking themes from the Bible, mythology, literature, and Renaissance painting, Cameron modelled the women around her–friends, servants, relatives–as Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Esther, Rachel, A Bacchante, Guinevere, and Mary, among others.

Julia Margaret Cameron was born in Calcutta in 1815 to a wealthy British family and she was educated in France and England. She is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century and is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian women, for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature. Cameron helped prove that portrait photography was indeed a veritable fine art medium in a context where photography was not yet widely accepted as such.

After showing a keen interest in photography for many years, Cameron took up the practise at the relatively late age of 48, after her daughter got her a camera as a present. She quickly produced a large body of work capturing the genius, beauty, and innocence of the women and children who visited her studio at Freshwater. When Julia Margaret Cameron began taking pictures in the 1860s, photography was largely defined by formal commercial studio portraits, elaborate high art narratives, or clinical scientific or documentary renderings. Cameron, on the other hand, forged her own path as a thoughtful and experimental portrait artist who happened to use a camera instead of paint.

As by the time Cameron got her first camera, all her children were grown-up and her husband was often away on business. From that moment on, Cameron dedicated herself to mastering the difficult tasks of processing negatives and focusing on subjects in order to capture beauty.

Annie by Julia Margaret Cameron

Cameron considered the portrait displayed above to be her first successful piece of art. This portrait shows Annie Philpot, the daughter of a family staying in the Isle of Wight where Cameron lived.

She wasted no time in marketing, exhibiting, and publishing her artistic photographs, and it wasn’t long before she was successfully exhibiting and selling prints of her photographs in London and abroad.

Cameron presents womanhood and motherhood in her work through her soft, dainty portraits. Her images are original and show a very natural side to the beauty of women. In the 1800s ( the years of which Cameron’s childhood occurred) women were the continual victims of social and economic discrimination. Upper- and middle-class women’s choices were
limited to marriage and motherhood, or spinsterhood. Both choices resulted in domestic dependency. While they could find jobs as shop girls or factory workers, women were discouraged from being wage earners by the belief that women who earned wages were “unnatural.”

Justine Kurland and Julia Margaret Cameron’s work differentiate in very obvious ways. One of the main differences is the composition of their work.

Firstly, the majority of Cameron’s work is taken in portrait shots and Kurland’s work is largely based on landscape images. Kurland’s Girl pictures are all distant, based in the middle ground and background. The perspective changes throughout her images, however they are never in the foreground as portraits or specifically of someone, so, there isn’t always a focal point in Kurland’s work as the whole image is equally as interesting but also vast. Cameron’s compositions in her work consist of portraits of women and girls. They are all straight up in the foreground and eyeline of the viewer. The focal point in her work is pushed onto the subjects in the image and not so much on the background.

Colour, Tone and contrast are all a significant difference in both their work. Cameron’s work is monochromatic. A lot of her ‘Women’ pictures are in a sepia tone. This is because she used the most common process at the time, wet collodion glass negatives,  The process required a glass plate (approximately 12 x 10 inch) to be coated with photosensitive chemicals in a darkroom and exposed in the camera when still damp. The process of this causes the images to have a haze over them, this is intentional but also partly because she was taking pictures in the 1800s and the technology was no where near as developed as in the 2000s and they were physically developing their images back then. There is also a light vignette around the edges of her work which exaggerates to the softer tones in her work. On the other hand, Justine Kurland’s work is very modernised, her images are very high quality and not obviously edited. Her images are crisp and the colours are highly saturated making it appealing for the viewer. The light in Kurland’s work is all natural, her images appear to be taken in the morning/midday to capture as much natural daylight as she can.

The last main difference between their work is the significant ways they represent girlhood. Cameron captures images of woman and very young girls presenting motherhood and womanhood which are both big factors of girlhood. Her images show delicate woman close together, lying on each other, gazing into the distance. This could possibly represent what it was like for women in the 1800s, they had to stick together and fight for their rights. Being a ‘True Woman’ at that time was such an important responsibility, the ideal of True Womanhood was early imprinted upon young girls, who
were trained to be obedient and exhibit great self-control. Also, Cameron uses a lot of flowers, bushes and trees for the background and as props in her work; those things are very stereotypical girl objects. However, Kurland’s work presents a more modern day view of young, teenage girls. runaways, being free to roam around. In her images, as a viewer you can sense the feel of having free will. Her images are based in the south/ west of America where a lot of the societies are abandoned. Although the relationship between the girls in her images are artificially created by Kurland, they depict the subjects as fluid and nomadic ( Kurland’s view of girlhood). She taps into a rich heritage of tracking co-operative and engaged subjects, forging a bond and representing them sensitively and intelligently. There is a sense of mutual respect here it seems.

Overall, Justine Kurland and Julia Margaret Cameron portray Girlhood in very different ways. Justine Kurland mirrors her childhood of her own runaway trauma in her work. She uses teenage girl students from the area she’s in with her travels and presents them as her own runaway stories. Julia Margaret Cameron staged her photos. Most of Cameron’s photographs are portraits of members of her family, concentrating on their faces. She wanted to show their natural beauty, and she often asked female sitters to let down their hair so she could show them in a way that they were not accustomed to presenting themselves. Cameron wanted to present the women and girls as they were, showing their natural beauty; as oppose to telling a story like Kurland’s images. Cameron’s images are documentary, she wanted to provide a straight forward representation of the beauty of women and Kurland’s images tell a story of the teenage girl lifestyle. They are made by and for women, with an absence of the male gaze and any sense of objectification, almost as a form of quiet rebellion.

Bibliography

https://www.girlmuseum.org/project/i-am-a-girl/#:~:text=Girlhood%20is%20an%20%E2%80%9Cidea%E2%80%9D%20that,which%20is%20never%20fully%20achievable.

https://www.theslateonline.com/article/2023/12/your-world-today-growing-out-of-girlhood

https://www.artnet.com/artists/justine-kurland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron

https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=gsw_pub

https://www.e-flux.com/criticism/333432/justine-kurland-s-girl-pictures#:~:text=Although%20a%20few%20of%20the,California%2C%20and%20the%20American%20South.

I have chosen these images for my final selection to put into the photobook. I may well still remove images from this collection, but these are the ones I will go into Blurb with.

In what way does Justine Kurland & Michelle Sank explore youth and femininity through their work?

For my personal study, my interpretation of nostalgia will be based around femininity and youth. I am going to take inspiration from a previous project that I have done based on femininity which was originally inspired from ‘Girl Pictures’ by Justine Kurland. Girl Pictures is a photo book based on teenage runaways who become empowered the deeper you investigate the book. When looking at different photographer’s work, I came across a certain photo named ‘Fashion’ by Paul Kookier which caught my eye and has given me inspiration as I believe it captures femininity in a particular way which is not immensely popular. Another photographer which I discovered was Michelle Sank and her photo book ‘becoming’. Becoming is a series of projects made by Michelle Sank put into one book and explores the background of young children who have struggled throughout their childhood. I believe that both photographers capture femininity very well as they have a female’s perspective and outlook.  

I am pleased to be doing my personal project based on the nostalgia of femininity and youth as they are all important topics. Femininity is empowering as it can show the amount of power someone can hold through feelings and emotions. I will be taking photos primarily of females as they are getting ready for nights out and while they are out, however, there will be features of males. I aim to capture aspects of youth through teenagers partying and having fun. some of my photos will be staged like Justine Kurland’s images and others will not be, similar to Michelle Sank’s work. 

In this essay, I will be conducting how photos can not only be ‘experiences captured ‘, but also so much more. Sontag implies to readers of her book that “the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.” (Add in Harvard reference Susan Sontag) The use of the phrase ‘acquisitive mood’ suggests that photographs can be catalysts in the pursuit of hoarding memories and experiences creating an overall sense of nostalgia.  

Historically, the concept of photography stemmed from art and paintings. Portrait paintings were used by high-net-worth families, for family portraits which were highly staged, and could be manipulated into concealing the truth. However, as photography became more popular and more accessible in the 1800’s, the style of portraits also gained popularity due to the convenience of the process becoming less time consuming and tedious. Photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron, who was known for her ‘soft-focus’ images of men and women during the 19th century is “considered one of the most important portraitists” (add in Harvard Reference Wikipedia) and took inspiration from paintings and believed in the Pre-Raphaelites beliefs. The Pre-Raphaelite’s were a secret society of young male artists which believed that art should represent the real world and should be painted how you see it without manipulation. In which, while researching Justine Kurland, it became known that she not only gained inspiration from Julia Margaret Cameron she also believed in the Pre-Raphaelite’s beliefs. 

Justine Kurland was born in Warsaw, New York 1969. And is best known for her nineteenth century English picturesque, styles landscape images. I have been most captivated by Kurland’s book ‘Girl Pictures’ as it shows a juxtaposition of the ideal American dream. Throughout the book, Kurland experiments with a staged genre to explore the subjects of femininity and youth through the eyes of teenage runaways, in which she uses to dive into the tales of “tales of teenage delinquency” (add in Harvard reference from the book) she did this by “trolling the streets around various high schools, cruising for teenage collaborators.” (add in Harvard reference from the book) By getting real ‘runaways’ to model, Kurland introduces a sense of documentary into this book making it all seem more real. Justine Kurland was a runaway herself, which enables her to relate to the images she has taken and portray it through her own subjective experiences which are nostalgic to herself. Furthermore, Kurland gains inspiration through art as she states, “I’m always thinking about painting:” “English landscapes and the utopian idea and photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. (add in Harvard Reference system Wikipedia)

Justine Kurland’s ‘Girl Pictures’ were often staged in desolated areas which could be argued that they are almost disconnected from reality which conveys a sense of escapism. The story of the book evolves the further you investigate it. Towards the beginning of the book, it is staged in quite well populated areas with a scarce number of models. However, as the location settings become more rural, more runaways would “multiply through the force of togetherness.” (add in Harvard reference from the book). 

Another artist whose work attracted my attention was Michelle Sank, and her photo book Becoming. Michelle Sank is a South African photographer however, moved to England in 1978, and has called it her forever home from the moment she got there. Becoming is a collection of Sank’s previous projects which include ‘Bye-Bye Baby’ and ‘Celestial Echoes’. I was most riveted by Justine Kurland’s intention of capturing the raw experiences of childhood and growing up. ‘Bye-Bye Baby’ is one of the photo series used within Becoming and “explores the way young boys and girls interpret their understanding of masculinity and femininity.” She mainly produced all of her images in Ireland in which she was able to capture children that are confronted with the issue of interface- the areas within Ireland that are segregated into working class residential zones, who are also challenged with struggles for example, teenage mothers, young offenders and young carers who are faced with looking after sick family members, “Celestial Echoes continues with this theme looking at this phenomenon within older adolescent girls”. 

Michelle Sank’s images have a documentary style about them as they are not staged, everyone who features within the photobook has been “invited to present themselves to the camera as they deem appropriate.” which creates a “quiet conflict” aesthetic. “The young people confidently embrace the opportunity to be photographed with attitude and grace. At the same time, they appear vulnerable and doubtful, questioning the complex process and changing realities of becoming an adult.” 

Overall, Justine Kurland & Michelle Sank explore youth and femininity through their work from both an inside and outside perspective they both shared elements of trust with their models and had a responsibility to portray characters with sensitivity and respect. Justine Kurland almost relives her childhood of being a teenage runaway through out her book while exaggerating the stereotypes of femininity. She does this by staging her photos with an all-female society. While doing this, she wanted the models to play a caring supportive role to one another, however they started to form their own community and pact on their own terms as they bonded and started to create their own friendships through togetherness, further exaggerating the stereotypes of female friendships as they play with each other’s hair and walk arm in arm together. Due to Justine Kurland’s previous experiences, she would have been able to create more of a bond and a relationship with her subjects over time unlike Michelle sank, as she could be viewed as an outsider looking in. Furthermore, Michelle Sank explores femininity and youth through capturing the vulnerability of children which again, come from tricky backgrounds, however, this time in their own community which they live in. Michelle Sank takes on a documentary role as she looks deeper into the backgrounds of everyone she is photographing and how social structures can affect and make people who they are as individuals, and how someone people can be born at a disadvantage.

Bibliography: List all relevant sources used

• Wikipedia contributors (2023) Justine Kurland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justine_Kurland (Accessed: 26th January 2024).
• Wikipedia contributors (2024) Julia Margaret Cameron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron (Accessed: 26th January 2024).
  • A very brief history of portrait photography (2022). https://www.befunky.com/learn/a-history-of-portrait-photography/ (Accessed: 26th January 2024).
• Sank, M. (no date) Michelle Sank: Becoming by Michelle Sank. https://www.lensculture.com/books/7058-michelle-sank-becoming (Accessed: 5th February 2024).
• Ken (no date) Bye-Bye baby. https://www.michellesank.com/portfolios/bye-bye-baby (Accessed: 5th February 2024).
• Justine Kurland on The Girl Picture Problem (2024). https://www.frieze.com/article/justine-kurland-girl-picture-problem (Accessed: 5th February 2024).

I gathered some photographs from personal family archives. I want to incorporate some of these photos into my photobook, fitting into the ‘nostalgia‘ theme through reflection upon my childhood.

There are some other old photographs I found; photobooth and passport pictures. These photobooth photos are of my mum and dad in their childhood. I thought these might be good to incorporate into the photobook as it shows where I’ve come from, as well as where my dual nationality stems from. I imported them into Lightroom so I could adjust the pictures and edit the contrast.

These are some passport photographs I have gathered of my nana, mum, dad, brother, and myself. I like these as they’re a more standardised portrait where you can clearly see the person’s face. I want to incorporate these into my photobook so I could construct a family tree of photos. I’ll put this on the cover of the photobook or one of the first pages. This is to establish the storyline and shows how the subject of my book is on my family. These are the final pictures I’ve chosen to use for my photobook:

“To collect photographs is to collect the world.” 

Justine Kurland and Julia Margaret Cameron have been very influential with their work, demonstrating the theme of femininity and girlhood throughout. I will be analysing both Kurland and Camerons work and how they exhibit what girlhood means. Although both Kurland and Cameron both illustrate the theme of femininity within their work, they both have different ways of presenting a portraying this theme. Cameron was a 19^th century pictorialist photographer whose style of photography was taking close-up portraits, with soft focus and dramatic lighting. Whereas Kurland is a 21^st century contemporary photographer whose style of photography is taking images of girls in rural landscapes. 

Pictorialism became the first international art movement in photography which first started in the 1870s and really started to rise and become popular in the 1990s. The pictorialism movement was an approach to photography where there was an emphasise the beauty of the subject and composition rather than the documentation of reality. Photographer’s images and work were inspired by the sublime and beauty, often taking images of nature and people focusing on the raw and natural beauty within the subject. When choosing subjects to photograph, they would choose people who they thought represented beauty.  It was said that ‘the beauty of pictorial composition is necessary for any photograph to be art’ photographers thought that if they demonstrated aspects of fine art into their photographs then their images would be seen as art and photography would be accepted as a form of art. There were many popular pictorialist one being Alfred Stieglitz who was part of the organisation photo-secession which was formed in the 1890s. The organisation wanted to progress photography as a form of art which developed the pictorial movement. Stieglitz work consisted of many images focusing on the raw beauty of nature as well as portraits of women before he lost interest in the aim and movement. One of the most well know photographers from the pictorial movement was Julia Margaret Cameron who was one of just two nineteenth-century photographers deemed by Stieglitz and his circle to be worthy of the term “artist.” Rather than capturing the raw beauty within landscapes, Cameron took portraits, which she staged, that focused on the beauty of the subjects as her images were inspired by beauty and the sublime. Staged photography is where the photographer directs and stages everything or aspects of the photograph in advance in order to have full control over how their idea is visualised rather than a candid photo where the photo is taken without creating a posed appearance. An image can be staged in many different ways such as asking the subject within the portrait to position themselves in a certain way for example, placing their hand over their hands over their face. Photographers are also able to stage landscape images by manipulating the environment for example placing or removing objects in the landscape to enable the environment to match the photographers’ vision. Staged photography which is also known as tableau photography become well known in the 1980s through the artists Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall who staged their compositions which has now become a common theme within photography today.  

Julia Margaret Cameron is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19^th century as well as having a significant influence on the pictorial movement. Cameron received h er camera late in her life, in 1863, as a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. This kickstarted Camerons career as a photographer as she went on to become one of the few photographers who established photography as a form of art. From this point on, Cameron devoted herself to photography turning her coal-house into her own dark room where she would develop her images. Controversially when producing her images, she would often leave visible scratches, smudges and other traces of her process on negatives and prints which other photographers didn’t agree with. By leaving the marks in the images, Cameron shows imperfections which demonstrates that no one in society is perfect and that no one should have to meet the standards set by society today. These marks would be left on the images as developing the images was a complicated process this is because the negatives were made out of glass and were sensitized just before the exposure was made. Cameron first started to photograph her friends, family, household staff and famous neighbours who would dress up and pose for her before moving on to photographing subjects from religion, literature and history. Cameron would set up her large-format camera on a tripod before taking her images. Cameron’s style of photography was unique as she took close-up portraits, with soft focus and dramatic lighting. This gave the images a dream like effect which was also controversial as other photographers didn’t like how Camerons images didn’t come out clear and sharp. Cameron’s created portraits of famous Victorian men as well as young women as she wanted to capture the beauty in both men and women. Most of her portraits were of young women and girls which could suggest that Cameron could see traits of her own childhood within the young girls which drew her to photograph them. When choosing her female subjects Cameron would choose them based on their beauty, which links back to the pictorial movement as Cameron emphasised the raw and natural beauty of her subjects rather than using them as a form of documentation photography. Many of the subjects photographed by Cameron described her as eccentric, generous and bossy with her commitment to her art being the standout factor. Her work was split into three categories, portraits, Madonnas and subjects. As well taking many portraits, Cameron also had a love for ‘Madonna with Children.’ The Madonna and child is the name given to a piece of at that shows the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus. Julia Margret Cameron would create images like this by dressing her subject in dark cloaks, representing the religious figure of Virin Mary and placing them in front of a plain background along with a child or in some cases two children. Cameron would often create Madonnas which composed of a mother and her two girls which would idealise scenes of motherhood. Camerons work has inspired many photographers toady such as Justine Kurland as they both share a passion for the theme of femininity.  

Justine Kurland is a well renowned photographer for photographing subjects in rural landscapes in America which explores the theme femininity, girlhood and youth based on Kurland’s childhood memories. This is evident in her book ‘girl pictures’ which consists of images of ‘runaway’ teenage girls who were staged as independent and fearless, surrounded by a wild American landscape. By portraying the girls as independent and fearless it hides the truth that in reality the ‘runaways’ have little to nothing and are probably the complete opposite. Kurland’s work has been influenced strongly by 19^th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron who also focused on the theme of femininity as well as Greg Crewdson, Philip Lorca Di Corcia and Jeff Wall. Kurland’s project all started by taking photos of a teenage girl called Alyssum, who was the daughter of a guy she was dating. It was argued that Alyssum was a rebellious child as she was known for skipping school and smoking pot, which is why Kurland decided she would start to take photos of her. They both came up with the idea that Alyssum would be the subject, known as the ‘teenage runaway.’ Kurland liked the idea of this ‘teenage runaway’ that she had come up with so much that she decided she wanted to expand her cast these girls were then known as ‘runaways.’ Kurland would visit various locations and pick up many new girls along the way, collecting anyone who was willing to join. The ‘runaways’ would then work with Kurland to create images that demonstrated what girlhood was, shutting down the stereotypical activities carried out by young girls and girls in general. By staging her images to present the girls as independent and spirited it hid the truth from the viewers from the outside that these girls were living a harsh and rough life. Kurland would stage her images to explore the theme of girlhood within her work as she worked with her subjects and selected the location. Kurland would then prompt the girls how to act and respond to the given scenario which enabled her to produce her final outcomes. Even though the subjects are responding to the scenario given to them by Kurland there is a sense of freedom throughout her images as the girls were trying on a version of themselves that the world had shown them was “boy.” There was also a sense of nostalgia for Kurland when creating these images as she staged her images to “portray the teenage girls as a surrogate to herself” even though she was behind the camera she also felt she was in front of it in a way as she had built such close relationship with the girls. Travelling across the country, Kurland and the girls had all the freedom in the world to created images that demonstrated the simple joys of childhood, foregrounding girls’ lives. By spending so much time together Kurland and the girls all made special bonds with one another leaving them with a special connection to the photos. However, Kurland is hiding the harsh reality that all the girls are ‘runaways’ and aren’t living a pleasant life by presenting the images in a soft and gentle way she does this to show how even though these girls don’t have the nicest lives they’re still able to escape reality in a way when performing for the camera. 

Overall, it is evident that both Justine Kurland and Julia Margaret Cameron have demonstrated the theme of childhood within their work even though they’ve presented it in very different ways.  Through studying the work of both Kurland and Cameron, there is a clear resemblance between the way they emphasise the importance of femininity and what it means to be a girl. Kurland’s images go against what society says teenage girls should stereotypically act and dress as her images portray activities carried out by teenage boys. Whereas Camerons images demonstrate what society expects young women and girls to look like as she photographs teenage girls that are seen for as beautiful and stereotypically what society views a girl to look like. However, even though Cameron displayed her subjects as a perfect, she purposely leaves and creates imperfections such as scratches and smudges on her images which demonstrates how no one in society is perfect. On the other hand, Kurland makes use of aspects from constructed realities to create staged images to try and make an imperfect truth a perfect reality.   

Bibliography/ references  

https://www.britannica.com/technology/Pictorialism

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Stieglitz

https://archive.artic.edu/stieglitz/julia-margaret-cameron/

Cameron, Margaret, Julia (2023). Julia Margaret Cameron capture la beauté. Paris: Jeu de Paume. 

https://www.artnet.com/artists/justine-kurland/

https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/12463/justine-kurland-girl-pictures-aperture-rebellious-teenagers-the-runaways-book

Kurland, Justine (2020). Girl Pictures. New York: Aperture Foundation 

Bate, David (2016) ‘Pictorual Turn’ in Art Photography. London: Tate Galleries. 

How does Mitch Epstein express the notion of family and relationships in his work?  

“The business of family can never be separated from a family business.” (Epstein, M., 2003: 11) 

Family and relationships are very often explored within photography, but certain artists, like Mitch Epstein, explore these themes slightly differently, for example, Epstein explores family through discussing his father’s family business and what he does, using stills from interviews, archival material and more. This is how I will be exploring these themes throughout my personal study; I was particularly interested in Epstein’s project Family Business as my family own a local bakery named ‘Vienna Bakery’, I will be exploring how it came into my family and how it has been a large part of my life growing up leading me to have a lot of nostalgia surrounding the bakery. Most of my family have at some point worked in the bakery, proving Epstein’s comment “The business of family can never be separated from a family business” (Epstein, M., 2003: 11) to be true. Epstein chose this project as in 1999, Epstein returned to his hometown of Holyoke, Massachusetts, to record the demise of his father’s two businesses—a retail furniture store and a low-rent real estate empire. The resulting project assembled large-format photographs, video, archival materials, interviews and writing by Epstein, the book, Family Business, combined all these elements. This piece of work was specifically interesting to me as Epstein provides context into the background of his father’s company and his life growing up around a family business, which made me feel as though I could personally relate to it even though it’s two completely different companies. 

Documentary photography is used in nearly all of Epstein’s projects and is usually executed in a similar manner within his work. Documentary photography took the idea of telling a story with a picture to another social level however discussing the photojournalistic style is very problematic, because trying to offer a single definition of the term is difficult as every photograph is in one sense or another a ‘document’.” Using this phrase, Epstein’s images of his father’s business could be read as ‘documents’. Epstein himself has said in an interview that the cinema has a significant influence on his work, showing his love of storytelling through the medium of photography. This is showcased in all of his work, but it is especially prominent in the project that I am exploring in this essay, Family Business, a multiple media project, where he uses photographs, video, archival material, interviews, storyboards, and a personal essay to document his father’s life through work. He uses this photojournalistic book to question how the ‘American Dream’ went awry. Epstein also studied photography under Garry Winogrand at the Cooper Union in New York. In my opinion, this is where Epstein is influenced by Winogrand’s street photography. This influence can be seen in his project The City. Within Winogrand’s work there is also a slightly performative style that can be seen in a lot of his images which can also be seen in some of Epstein’s work, for example his projects Recreation and Common Practice, which is a technique that is rarely seen in the documentary photography genre. During an interview where he speaks about the project, he says “To me, the key challenge was to find the balance between being honest, very forthright, and direct with the work, and at the same time allowing it to be personal,” in my opinion, he uses this balance of the two to create his narrative from both a photographer’s and a family member’s perspective, using the sensitivity of a family member and the bluntness of a professional photographer. 

Using Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s academic paper Inside/Out, I will be looking at whether Epstein is an insider or an outsider while exploring his father’s business during the project Family Business. When hearing that it’s his father’s business, you would assume that he’s looking at it from an insider’s perspective, but I think that there may be certain things that he’s looking at from a distance and this could be because at this point of his career, he had been travelling and had missed out on a lot of the events that had occurred to cause the downfall of his father’s business. In Inside/Out Solomon-Godeau says “The insider position – in this context the “good” position – is thus understood to imply a position of engagement, participation and privileged knowledge”, in my opinion, this is seen in Family Business, Epstein got to photograph and film his father talking with tenants who were leaving the apartments, or telling those who refused to leave to get out of the building, most people going in to do this would be refused, or alienated, by Epstein’s father. He is also privileged enough to be able to photograph certain staff members that he probably would have grown up knowing and they would’ve felt comfortable and trusted him enough to be in front of the camera for him. However, Solomon-Godeau also says “the outsider’s position, is taken to produce an alienated and voyeuristic relationship that heightens the distance between subject and object.” in Inside/Out, this can first be seen in the way that Epstein photographs and films the tenants’ interactions with his father without knowing who they are and what their situations may be which gives him his touristic view. The second way he has an outsider relationship to subjects in the project is by recording the success and downfall of the town Holyoake, Massachusetts, where his father’s business was. Although it was the town in which he grew up, he had moved away to do his photography studies quite young so, in my opinion, a lot of the town and a lot of the people living there would have been foreign to him. I think that in his project Family Business, Epstein is both an insider and an outsider, but primarily an insider, considering the project documents his father’s business. In Andy Grundberg’s review of the project, he says “But here the artist works from the inside out; having left Holyoke to pursue his career as an artist decades earlier, he can be unsparingly frank about his parents, brother and aunt without glossing over the horror he feels about what has happened to them and to his hometown.” (Grundberg, A. (2003)), I think that this solidifies my previous point of Epstein being both an insider and an outsider within his project Family Business in saying that he can be “unsparingly frank” about his family’s point of view but also has to be careful what he says about his hometown that he had moved out of years earlier. 

The way in which Epstein creates the narrative of his project can be seen as quite untraditional, instead of using the images, footage, text and archive material to create a linear storyline, he uses all of these to form a disorganised story, showing his ability to tell and create a narrative even if it’s not in a so-called traditional sense. Telling a story with pictures is an old device and Epstein helps give the idea a new meaning and helps make it more modernised than it once was. Within the media of still-images, he presents the different aspects of the business through, portraits, still-life images and images that would be classed as landscapes, within the book, he presents all of these in a sort of mix and match way, making it seem as though he hadn’t pre-planned what order he would put the images in and just did it. These mixed in with the interview footage with his mother and father, the footage of his father talking and having disagreements with the tenants and the material that he uses from the business’ archives, he creates a recognisable narrative without realising it. In contrast to Mary-Ellen Mark, who uses a linear narrative in her project Streetwise to help the consumer empathise with the homeless girl she is photographing, Epstein could possibly be using a nonlinear narrative to present the chaos that would have been happening in his family’s life at the time of the business’ demise. 

In conclusion, Mitch Epstein’s project Family Business explores family and relationships in many different ways using many different methods to do so. Using documentary photography, he explores his father’s relationships with different people involved in the business like the tenants of the apartments, different employees and even police officers that get involved with the conflicts between Epstein’s father and the tenants, he also explores how, over the years, the business has impacted his family, more specifically his mother who he does numerous interviews with. Within his storytelling technique, he uses flashbacks throughout the book, going against the traditional linear narrative that most narrative photographers use. Epstein is privileged enough to explore the business from a mostly insider perspective, making the trust and relationships with different subjects in the project better and stronger. Overall, through Epstein’s work, I have been able to explore my own family’s business’ history in depth, learn about how family affects, interacts with and influences a family business, whether it’s consciously or not. I hope that my images inspired by Epstein’s project will represent the business well and help other people understand how family businesses work.  

Bibliography

Epstein, M. (2003), Family Business.

Solomon-Godeau, A. (1995), Inside/Out

(https://www.photopedagogy.com/uploads/5/0/0/9/50097419/week_5_abigail_solomon-godeau_inside_out.pdf)

Grundberg, A (2003), New York Times Book Review

(https://mitchepstein.net/new-york-times-book-review-december-7th-2003)

Interview with Mitch Epstein on Family Business:

“At once child and adult, innocent and sexual, protected and vulnerable, threatened and threat, in the shadows and spot-lit, girlhood occurs as a kind of ongoing moment between two reactive states.” – Claire Marie Healy (2023), ‘Girlhood’ 

Youth is a time of discovery and self-exploration, marked with a sense of vulnerability and curiosity; whereas femininity encompasses concepts associated with being female, linking emotions and experiences that are unique to women. Despite them being two very different concepts, each helps define the other as every girl grows into a woman. As a result, there has always been a fascination with the teenage years of girls, especially in the 21st century after the rise of social media and the ever-growing list of societal pressures, but the way teenage girls act, dress, speak, or react is still regularly questioned. Two photographers who have explored this in their work are Justine Kurland and Petra Collins, through their images they invite viewers to reflect on their own experiences and perceptions of girlhood while challenging societal norms and expressing their thoughts about the complexities of growing up as a girl. 

In an article with ArtForum, Justine Kurland spoke about her inspirations, “I’m always thinking about painting: nineteenth-century English picturesque landscapes and the utopian ideal, genre paintings, and also Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs. I started going to museums at an early age, but my imagery is equally influenced by illustrations from the fairy tales I read as a child.” – Meghan Dailey (2000), ‘1000 words: Justine Kurland’. Kurland credits a lot of her innovation to Neo-romanticism, an art movement that originated in the 20th century as a reaction against the dominant trends of modernism, it seeks to capture a sense of nostalgia, longing, and idealism; it draws inspiration from the romantic movement of the 19th century which emphasised emotion, individualism, and a connection to nature. Kurland’s photography often features young women in dreamlike and natural settings, her images evoke a sense of exploration and innocence. She uses natural light and soft colours which adds to the romantic and nostalgic atmosphere of her photographs. Whereas Petra Collins’s photographs depict young women in intimate moments, she incorporates elements of surrealism, creating dreamlike qualities that align with the Neo-romantic aesthetic.   

Born in New York in 1969, Justine Kurland is a renowned contemporary photographer who is known for her captivating images that explore the themes of youth and femininity. Kurland’s images often depict girls and young women in natural surroundings such as forests, fields, and abandoned urban areas. She seeks to capture the moments of freedom, curiosity, and self-discovery of the girls while still holding onto the innocence of youth in hopes of challenging traditional gender roles and societal expectations placed on young girls. Part of her art is the expression of strength and resilience in her subjects, she portrays them as active agents rather than passive objects. Utilising unconventional situations, Kurland offers a unique perspective on the experiences of young individuals as they navigate their surroundings and identities. Her famous book “Girl Pictures” address the complexities and contradictions of growing up in a society that simultaneously idealises and restricts girls, she highlights different themes of rebellion, vulnerability, and friendship throughout the series of images. The photobook follows American runaway girls as they explore their newfound freedom; the images are visually striking and can allude to a dreamlike aesthetic. Natural light and careful composition are all taken into consideration as a way of creating a powerful visual narrative that invites viewers to reflect on their own experiences of youth and femininity. All the images were taken between 1997 and 2002 yet they feel timeless, Justine got young girls to pose as runaways under highway underpasses or next to neglected lakes, she named them her “standing army”. In an interview with AnOther, Kurland described why she felt it was so important for her to create these images, “– you can create a world for yourself, one that’s bearable to live in. I built on and corrected some of the tropes surrounding the representation of teenagers; these pictures were not solicitous renditions of hypersexualised children.” – Belle Hutton (2020), ‘Girl Pictures: The Story Behind Justine Kurland’s Teenage Runaways Series’ 

Another photographer whose work delves into the realms of youth and femininity is Petra Collins, born in 1992. Her images and concepts offer a unique perspective on the challenges and experiences faced by young women in today’s society. Collins focuses more on identity, body image, and sexuality while capturing moments that challenge conventional beauty standards. She heavily critiques the ‘male gaze’ and objectification of women and instead uses her work to reclaim agency over female representation. The images question and challenge the norms that have arisen from social media, advertising, and fashion along with encouraging viewers to question their preconceived notions. Through tackling societal issues, she also incorporates the themes of mental health and vulnerability, her images often depict young girls in moments of weakness, and resilience, but also self-discovery as she aims to create a space for reflection. The visually captivating and thought-provoking images that Collins creates are infused with a sense of nostalgia; she incorporates elements of fashion, surrealism, and pop culture while using lighting and colour to enhance the emotional impact of her work. My favourite collection from the Canadian photographer is “The Teenage Gaze”, it includes intimate portraits shot from 2010-2015 of teenage life from a creative adolescent perspective, it is a stereotype-free view of young girls which portrays the raw and unfiltered spirit of girlhood. The expression of her art is built on moments of joy, vulnerability, confusion, and rebellion in a transformative phase of life. Collins spoke about her inspirations in an interview with Vogue, “My goal is just to create images that generate a conversation about things that aren’t spoken about. I want to change the ways young girls look at themselves and the way women at large are looked at…. So, when I was 15 and started working, it was a time when I was going through puberty, and beginning to discover my sexuality and photography and film were a means of working that out.” – Gabriella Karefa-Johnson (2014), ‘Petra Collins on Her New Photography Show “Discharge,” Teenagedom, and the Female Gaze’.    

Justine Kurland and Petra Collins explore youth and femininity in their work by rewiring the view on teenage girls, they steer far away from stereotypes without their work being too out of the ordinary. They both depict the realities of growing up as a teenage girl without the sexualisation, instead challenging societal expectations placed on young girls. While Kurland’s work evokes a sense of nostalgia and romanticism, Collins focuses more on identity and body image while critiquing the ‘male gaze’ and the objectification of women. Through their images, these photographers invite viewers to reflect on their own perspectives and experiences of girlhood, while encouraging them to challenge societal norms and pressures that continue to shape the lives of young women today.  

Bibliography  

1. Dailey, M. (2020) ‘1000 words: Justine Kurland’. ArtForum: https://www.artforum.com/features/1000-words-justine-kurland-162362/ (accessed Feb 2024) 

2. Healy, C. M. (2023) ‘Girlhood’, London: Tate Enterprises Ltd. 

3. Hutton, B. (2020) ‘Girl Pictures: The Story Behind Justine Kurland’s Teenage Runaways Series’. AnOther: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/12463/justine-kurland-girl-pictures-aperture-rebellious-teenagers-the-runaways-book (accessed Feb 2024) 

4. Karefa-Johnson, G. (2014) ‘Petra Collins on Her New Photography Show “Discharge,” Teenagedom, and the Female Gaze’. Vogue: https://www.vogue.com/article/petra-collins-photography-show-discharge-teenagedom-female-gaze (accessed Feb 2024) 

5. Koons, J (2022) ‘Neo-Romanticism: History, Characteristics, and Notable Artists’. MasterClass: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/neo-romanticism (accessed Feb 2024)   

6. Kurland, J. (2020) ‘Girl Pictures’. New York: Aperture. https://aperture.org/featured/justine-kurland-girl-pictures/ (accessed Feb 2024) 

I decided to use the Lightroom brush tool to edit this image.

I liked the way the colours worked here, but I thought that it would be effective to make it look as though the rest of the image was black and white whilst having my dad and his brightly coloured clothes in colour. I think this is symbolic of the way that he always dresses colourfully and is always focused on the fun side of every situation. He always seems to be the most colourful person in the room, with the rest fading into black and white. I am happy with the outcome of this image, but I am not fully sure if I will use it in the final project.