Pictures Of Girl Life

"A Girl's Life is a graphic melodrama of romance, crime, and passion in which girls 'struggle to survive the snares and pitfalls of contemporary life.' Darkly comic and fiendishly noir, the mood of this book is expressed in colorful prose, lurid collage, and wildly adventurous typography. This collaboration between visual poet Johanna Drucker and painter/book artist Susan Bee is an exciting synthesis of two distinctive but sympathetic sensibilities which addresses adolescent angst in all of its fashionably gory details; 'accessory to a crime' takes on a whole new meaning in this book."--

A Girl's Life in Virginia Before the War is a book by Letitia M. Burwell. A riveting eyewitness testimony of pre-war plantation life, with lively descriptions of the relations between master and slaves.

The North American frontier is an enduring symbol of romance, rebellion, escape, and freedom. At the same time, it's a profoundly masculine myth--cowboys, outlaws, Beat poets. Photographer Justine Kurland 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 a standing army of teenaged runaways in resistance to patriarchal ideals," says Kurland. She portrays the girls as fearless and free, tender and fierce. They hunt and explore, braid each other's hair, and swim in sun-dappled watering holes--paying no mind to the camera (or the viewer). Their world is at once lawless and utopian, a frontier Eden in the wild spaces just outside of suburban infrastructure and ideas. Twenty years on, the series still resonates, published here in its entirety and including newly discovered, unpublished images.