Photographers

Justine Kurland (born 1969 in Warsaw, New York) is an American photographer known for her staged, narrative-driven images of American landscapes and the fringe communities that inhabit them. She earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1996 and her MFA from Yale University in 1998, studying under Gregory Crewdson.

Kurland first gained recognition with the exhibition “Another Girl, Another Planet” (1999), which debuted her celebrated “Girl Pictures” series—staged tableau photographs of adolescent girls portrayed as runaways or feral wanderers in suburban wastelands and wilderness settings. These images, made between 1997 and 2002, challenged traditional representations of girlhood and positioned young women at the center of a radical, utopian imaginary.

Throughout the 2000s, Kurland traveled extensively across the United States and abroad, creating photographic series focused on utopian communes, spiritual seekers, and everyday forms of alternative living. After becoming a mother, she shifted toward photographing pregnant women, mothers, and later trains, hobos, and mechanics—subjects influenced by her son’s evolving interests, extending her exploration of American identity and masculinity.

Her recent work includes the SCUMB Manifesto collage series, which reclaims space for women by physically deconstructing books by canonical male photographers. Kurland’s photographs have been widely exhibited and are held in major museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Getty Museum.