Lecture #2: JUSTINE KURLAND

Before I begin my review, I'd like to say that I love that all the visiting artists so for have, "dealt with feminist issues." All the "girlhood topics," HAVE been different from the many white male lectures I always and regularly attend. Don't get me wrong here: I love men. But seeing that ALL of my teachers, except for two (Vita and Amanda), have been male for every single one of my classes, for every single year, for over the past four years of my college education here at VCU, that it's nice and a bit refreshing, if I dare say, to see and hear about work from a female perspective.

So thanks Paul for the diversity in the lectures.

Enough moaning...

In some ways I wish my meeting with Justine Kurland could have occurred before seeing her lecture, because then I might have been a bit less nervous/anxious/terribly scared to talk to her. After hearing Justine discuss her work, I realized, not that I didn't already assume, that a successful Yale photo graduate was going to be very intimidating to talk to about my own half-developed, not completely finished work. But I thoroughly enjoyed her lecture and the ease in which she talked about her work. Her images are truly magical, like a fairytale world of women not chained down by commercialism or materialism. Their like little Gardens of Edens - without Adam.
I appreciated that she showed several images from every body of work she created - it was great to see the progression between each series and the similarties and differences within them. I found it interesting that when Justine created a body of work that steered away from the female fairytales, like the Communes and Rennaissance people, she would immediately go back to them, as if to recover her lost Utopia.
I related to Justine's series of teenage girls. Even though some of the images were only displayed for a few minutes, I could recognize and point out things I use to do when I was younger. There were images where girls were bicycling with their feet, braiding hair, and drawing letters on backs, (which I had wanted to believe they were doing, and was excited to hear that that really was what they were doing.)
It was interesting to hear Justine talk about exploiting the people in her images. That she falls in love with her subject matter- she loves them, yet exploits them, because she loves them. In many ways I feel it would be natural to want to protect the things you love, to shield them, hide them from the world, not expose them to the world. It's such a strange thing to think about, to take something you care dearly for and exploit it. But it is also a very passionate way of expressing your love for something - that you care for it so much, you have to show it to the world, search for it, live it, and make work about it.