Justine Kurland

Shane told me to look up Justine Kurland while we were discussing my work today in our teacher-student conference. Her work involves a lot of landscapes which I've recently been trying to photograph seriously for the first time in my life. I've always shied away from it because I felt it's all been done and seen before. However, since we were supposed to challenge ourselves for our final project, I decided I wanted to do something I disliked/hadn't experimented with yet.
I never liked landscape photography because I felt like it wasn't the photographer making the picture, it was the earth's magnificence desensitized by a lens and pasted on paper...as if you couldn't feel the environment. Yes, I know that was really dumb of me to say. I know that now that I have proven myself wrong during the hours laboring over our dodging and burning assignment, and my six hour long hikes through the mountains. I spent a lot of time reflecting about myself, art, spirituality, and other things during the last two weeks while we've been preparing for our final assignment.
As photographers we have the chance to gift the world with our perspectives, experiences, surroundings, and sharing our visions. This isn't something everyone get's the chance to do. Others save lives while we put ours out there and hope that the world will reciprocate. . . . ANYWAY
Back to what this is really about....
The majority of Justine Kurland's work that I found consists of really picaresque depictions of groups of teens standing in a landscape. It looks like an organized group most of the time; either dressed or posed in similar ways. I'm definitely going to reference her work a lot during my final project. She works with color more than black and white, so it was hard for me to find example images for you. I don't think I will be echoing any of her poses or concepts, but I do enjoy the way she positions her subjects together. There's a parallel between the people and the landscape that speaks for itself to the viewer. Kurland was born in the late 60's and lives/works in NYC. Here's a quote from an article that I think explains the emotion of her work accurately: "Her landscapes and her figures are analogies of each other, in-between spaces where identity and function have not yet been fixed or have begun to slip ambiguously into freedom. Recent work considers community more generally, focusing on present-day communes and people united by a choice to live "off-the-grid." "

Wood Song 2002 toned silver gelatin print 14.25 x 18inches

The Piper 2004 toned silver gelatin print 22.75 x 17.75 inches

The Fencer 2004 toned silver gelatin print 22.75 x 17.75 inches