Justine Kurland

Born in Warsaw, New York, in 1969, Justine Kurland holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in photography from Yale University. She is best known for photographing subjects in American wilderness landscapes, and her strongly narrative work is influenced by nineteenth-century English picturesque landscapes and the utopian ideal as well as genre paintings, the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron and Mathew Brady, and illustrations from fairy tales. Kurland has used staged tableaux to explore the social landscape of girlhood, life on communes, and life in the wilderness. She collaborates with her subjects, who are real people rather than models, in selecting locations and then talks to them about the scenes and scenarios she would like them to respond to and interpret for the camera.
Kurland’s photographs are held in museums including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Mary O'Donnell Hulme