Justine Kurland and her young son Casper spend months at time travelling throughout the American West on photographic road trips that capture as well as become the subjects of her work. The New York-based photographer gained recognition right out of graduate school, and is known for her idyllic photos of adolescent girls, women and their children, often unclothed and set in pristine natural environments. The current body of work, inspired largely by her son’s strong interest and fascination with trains, explores the remains of our commercial rail system and the nomadic culture of hobos, street kids and train hoppers who build their lives around riding the rails.

Kurland, who received her MFA from Yale in 1998, still shoots film, trekking a large or medium format camera and tripod to locales that allowed her to capture freight trains moving through incredible vistas. The images consider utopian ideas of freedom while questioning the romanticism of a transient lifestyle.

Kurland’s work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Her work is also part of the collections of the Whitney Museum, New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Allyn Cantor