Photographers in the Garden: In conversation with with Justine Kurland

Since the invention of the medium, photographers have been drawn by the allure of flowers. This group exhibition is excerpted from the book The Photographer in the Garden, co-published by Aperture and the George Eastman Museum, celebrating the rich history of artists working in the garden as a site of inspiration and reinvention.

The exhibition features works by acclaimed artists: Sam Abell, Alice Austen, Mark Cohen, Stephen Gill, Lonnie Graham, Justine Kurland, Lori Nix, Bill Owens, Sheron Rupp, Collier Schorr, Mike Slack.

During the course of the exhibition, the museum is proud to present a series of virtual panel discussions. This is the first of four panel discussions.

The Alice Austen House will host a conversation with Justine Kurland (featured artist) about Utopias and the American landscape.

Between 1997 and 2002, photographer Justine Kurland (b. 1969) focused her camera on landscapes as she drove across the United States. In her series “Girl Pictures,” Kurland staged teenage girls in various outdoor settings, creating a dreamlike, dystopian world where they “claim territory outside the margins of family and institutions,” as the artist has said. – NMWA

Justine Kurland is known for her utopian photographs of American landscapes and the fringe communities, both real and imagined, that inhabit them. Her early work comprises photographs, taken during many cross-country road trips, which reveal the double-edged nature of the American dream. In series such as Golden Dawn (2001-2003) and Mama Babies (2004-2007), Kurland presents a reality where utopia and dystopia are not polar opposites, but rather fold together in an uneasy coexistence. In speaking about her first and, perhaps, most celebrated body of work, Girl Pictures (1997-2002), Kurland describes her practice as navigating “the spectrum between the perfect and the real.” The artist’s most recent body of work, however, eschews her former itinerant lifestyle with pictures that focus instead on the intimate, private spaces of her New York apartment or her mother’s home in rural Virginia.

Registration required. Register here.