The first thread is a sequence of large-format photographs of her child and herself, intertwined with Kurland's famous images of roads, trains, infrastructure, and fellow travelers that she took at the same time. In revisiting these photographs, Kurland suggests a clarified reading of them as an anti-history of family and travel, disrupting the conventional family album to tell a story of queer motherhood and image-making in tune with Kurland's maternal lineage, for whom traversing the American landscape was a matter of great necessity. On the other side of this accordion-fold publication are Kurland's photographs of railroads crisscrossing the American landscape. Deconstructing the familiar mythology of the railroad as a pioneering symbol of modernity, these images observe the reality of how these routes sculpt and color the landscape, often submerged by the surrounding nature, leaving behind strips of barren sun. Bookended by new texts by Constance Debré and Lily Cho, This Train treats the American landscape as the manufactured tableau that it is, a cultural fable that hides the history of Chinese migrant labor and the human cost of freedom. Kurland once again raises an interlocking set of paradigms that maintain a tenacious hold on contemporary American life: the nuclear family, the open road, the violence of expansion, and the unyielding force of the land itself.
Signed copy. Limited edition of 1,000 signed copies, including a signed and numbered print (20.3 x 16.4 cm) handmade by the artist.
MACK Books, 2024
102 pages
27 × 18.5 cm
ISBN: 9781915743299
The first thread is a sequence of large-format photographs of her child and herself, intertwined with Kurland's famous images of roads, trains, infrastructure, and fellow travelers that she took at the same time. In revisiting these photographs, Kurland suggests a clarified reading of them as an anti-history of family and travel, disrupting the conventional family album to tell a story of queer motherhood and image-making in tune with Kurland's maternal lineage, for whom traversing the American landscape was a matter of great necessity. On the other side of this accordion-fold publication are Kurland's photographs of railroads crisscrossing the American landscape. Deconstructing the familiar mythology of the railroad as a pioneering symbol of modernity, these images observe the reality of how these routes sculpt and color the landscape, often submerged by the surrounding nature, leaving behind strips of barren sun. Bookended by new texts by Constance Debré and Lily Cho, This Train treats the American landscape as the manufactured tableau that it is, a cultural fable that hides the history of Chinese migrant labor and the human cost of freedom. Kurland once again raises an interlocking set of paradigms that maintain a tenacious hold on contemporary American life: the nuclear family, the open road, the violence of expansion, and the unyielding force of the land itself.
Signed copy. Limited edition of 1,000 signed copies, including a signed and numbered print (20.3 x 16.4 cm) handmade by the artist.
MACK Books, 2024
102 pages
27 × 18.5 cm
ISBN: 9781915743299
