American pop culture has maintained a lifelong love affair with the notion of the anti-hero, the quintessential rebel ready to right the wrongs of injustice on their own terms. The runaway often takes the form of a youth coming of age, who recognises the only way to live true to themselves is to escape the oppressive structures of family and society, and learn to survive on their wits.
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Yet while there are plenty of Huckleberry Finns and Holden Caulfields in American literature, there is a profound absence of girls daring to go it alone. It is here, into this void that photographer Justine Kurland first stepped more than 20 years ago when she began making the series Girl Pictures. The project, made between 1997 and 2002, has just published by Aperture.
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“I wanted the girls to run away to escape patriarchy, to forge a world of their own,” Kurland says. “I realise my fantasy derives from an American one; Manifest Destiny and dreams of the frontier. But the expansion West is essentially a colonialist desire, one of violence and genocide.”
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Resisting the system of American patriarchy and its imperialist agenda, Kurland transforms the landscape of teenage rebellion into mythic scenes of Arcadia. Here, a collectivist mindset permeates every frame, one that allows groups of young girls to band together and live off the land without exploiting it for themselves.
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