In Kurland’s series Girl Pictures, young women are shown as self-sufficient runaways, an intentional recast of a role historically embodied by male antiheroes like Holden Caulfield and Huckleberry Finn. While driving across the country, Kurland met girls who, away from the watchful eyes of adults, became her collaborators. Together they staged scenes of freedom and community in the semi-wild, in-between places long favored by adolescents: under overpasses, in abandoned fields, and beside creeks and lakes. These environments provided the chaos and adventure the teenagers sought, which Kurland notes is both inherent and performative: “Being a teenage girl is nothing without the willingness and ability to posture as the teenage girl.”

In The Wall, a group of girls navigates a small stream, heading out of a shadowy drain tunnel. Their loose hair and bare feet evoke the long history of portraying women as closer to nature than men, but their resolve, purposefulness, and camaraderie upend traditional stereotypes of female helplessness.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)