Girl pictures

The North American frontier is an enduring symbol of romance, rebellion, escape and freedom. At the same time, it is a deeply masculine myth – cowboys, outlaws, beat poets. Photographer Justine Kurland has reclaimed this space in her now-iconic series of images of teenage girls, taken between 1997 and 2002 on the road in the American wilderness. “I staged the girls as an army of teenage girls in constant flight and resistance to patriarchal ideals,” Kurland says. She depicts girls who are fearless and free, tender and fierce. They hunt and explore, braid their hair and swim in sun-drenched water holes, without worrying about the camera (or the viewer). Their world is both lawless and utopian, a frontier Eden in the wilderness just outside the infrastructure and ideas of suburbia. Twenty years later, the series still resonates, published here in its entirety and including unpublished and newly discovered images.