(b. 1969)
American
Born: Warsaw, N.Y., U.S.
Justine Kurland is an American photographer noted for her various series of staged images depicting teenage girls (and, later, members of utopian communities or mothers and children), often naked, in bucolic landscapes. Born in Warsaw, N.Y., she is the daughter of noted painter Bruce Kurland. Kurland graduated with a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1996 and received her MFA from Yale University in 1998, where she was influenced by her teachers Gregory Crewdson and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Crewdson included her in the group show Another Girl, Another Planet in 1999, introducing her to a wider audience. Subsequent international solo shows cemented her growing reputation, as did the books Spirit West (2000) and Old Joy (2004).
Based in New York City, Kurland travels extensively throughout the country (and, for one series, in New Zealand) in search of locations and models, often spending weeks getting to know her subjects and composing the highly theatrical images she intends to shoot. In an April 2000 Artforum interview she described some of her influences:
"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." [1]
Kurland is represented by the gallery Mitchell-Innes and Nash.
For more information, visit http://www.miandn.com/artists/justine-kurland/works/1/ and http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/arts/design/25kino.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=design&pagewanted=print&.
[1] “A Thousand Words: Justine Kurland Talks About Her Recent Photographs,” Artforum, April 2000. Quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justine_Kurland. (Accessed 05/07/2014)