This Train Is Bound For Glory by Justine Kurland (February 18, 2010) 
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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Categories / Documentary Conceptual / Landscape Photography / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / Comments Off
Curator Statement by Michael Itkoff
Justine Kurland’s photographs hold a special place in my heart. Long have I wanted to ride freight trains around the country—the way my mother did—and these images satisfy a sort of wander-lust. Kurland’s portfolio is the result of months of living and traveling with her small boy, Casper. The characters she meets and photographs are no more permanent fixtures in the immense landscape than the trains hurtling through it. The intimacy of family is extended to these lonesome wanderers who share a love of the land and freedom.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
In this series, photographed over two years of travel, Justine Kurland focuses on the distinct, nomadic subculture of the hobo. Her images of trains, train-hoppers, and the American West allude to a hobo mythology developed in folk songs and literature. Kurland's method combines a documentary process with romantic idealism, giving her images a naturalism inflected by utopian fantasy.
Kurland's work draws upon the nineteenth-century landscape tradition of depicting a perfect place. Her photographs are narratives gleaned from America's dream of itself: a collective identity based on a firm faith in manifest destiny. These images are portals into the not-quite-real, not-quite-fictional realm of the American frontier. Kurland is a longstanding traveler, wanderer, and seeker in her own right, whose itinerant lifestyle intersects with and informs her work.
Justine Kurland (1969) lives and works in New York, USA.
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