The Silent Passage of Time and Tradition: Justine Kurland’s Photographic Journey with Her Son through the American West
Justine Kurland’s photographs, captured across the expansive landscapes of the American West, present a tranquil tableau where trains silently traverse the picture plane. The vibrant hues of burnt red and yellow railroad cars emerge from tree-lined curves, bisecting flat plains and disappearing into the mouths of tunnels. Weathered freight cars, yoked together, dot the terrain and demarcate it. The images carry with them a rich historical significance – the bloody, relentless westward expansion of a nascent country and, today, the vast but aging infrastructure of a global power.
Yet, during the period from 2005 to 2011, these locomotives represented more than just a historical backdrop. They symbolized a unique bond between Kurland and her young son, Casper, as he accompanied her on extensive road trips from the time he was an infant. Living out of a van and a camping tent in parks and rural stopovers, Casper’s fascination with the rumbling approach of each train’s procession often led Kurland to the scenes that would later become her photographic masterpieces. His windblown hair and fixed gaze on the blurred passing cars are evident in several images.
As Kurland explains, “Casper loved trains, and if I was going to schlep him on these road trips, it made sense that I would then incorporate trains into the photographs that I was making.”
For a long time, Kurland didn’t showcase this body of work she had created in collaboration with her son. The few images featuring Casper could be found in “Highway Kind,” her 2016 book that pieced together various collections of work she had shot on the road to better understand American mythologies.
Throughout her three-decade career, Kurland has been known for photographing people on society’s fringes. She has staged scenes of runaway girls and documented transient lifestyles, spiritual experiences, and communes. However, she had never shown portraits of herself or her family life – including that of her son. She felt the idea of presenting an entire monograph on her son seemed “sentimental.”
However, as she gained perspective over the years, Kurland realized that their images and journeys together held a profound significance. The traditional family unit of a nomadic mother and child is rare in our society, as are family images that don’t evoke nostalgia or chronicle every triumph of childhood. Kurland and Casper appear as solitary figures, even when together, with their own inner lives. They embarked on a journey westward that has been mythologized by men – from explorers to photographers and writers.
“What’s important in thinking about these pictures is to consider what a family album could look like that doesn’t look like the way we think of motherhood,” Kurland said.
The photographs that make up “This Train,” newly published by Mack Books, are presented as a duality. Accordion-style pages in the book pull out, following Kurland and Casper’s life on the road: On one side, Kurland prepares a meal at a fold-out table while Casper looks out over the fire pit; on the reverse, Kurland captures the series of trains weaving in and out of the American landscape. Some were taken by Casper himself, as he and Kurland discussed in a conversation published in Aperture in 2016.
“Sometimes we would wait so long for the trains to appear,” Kurland told Casper of their patience. “Sometimes we would wait all day.”
Kurland calls the book “a love letter to Casper,” who is now 19 years old. It also serves as an acknowledgement of the challenges they faced during their nomadic lifestyle. Though Casper, for years, thought his life was normal – that other mothers at highway rest stops were photographers with their kids, too – he had a difficult time adjusting to school when Kurland enrolled him as a six-year-old.
“There’s certain kinds of ideas of normalcy in family life that, when you divert from them, it makes things significantly more complicated,” Kurland said.
Living off irregular paychecks, Kurland and Casper sometimes had to “hunker down” at campsites until a deposit came through. Their life on the road was filled with harrowing moments – they had to sleep in a garage, and Kurland had to make macaroni and cheese for Casper on a Bunsen burner because their van needed repairs.
In 2008, when the recession hit, Kurland took a teaching job that provided a steadier income, and she reduced her road trips to summer and winter breaks. Casper’s father had become more involved in his life by then, and after he turned 11, Casper asked to stop traveling entirely.
The photographs in “This Train” not only document the bond between mother and son but also raise darker narratives. The rail system symbolizes the markings of colonial settlers on the land – the forced migration and demise of Indigenous populations, as well as the deaths of some 1,200 Chinese immigrants who laid the tracks. In this way, Kurland’s reverse images of lone trains have a spectral presence, tracing and retracing the same pathways of the dead who built them.
As Kurland notes, “If I’m pointing my camera at the trains because Casper loves them, I’m still also pointing at the history embedded in the landscape of those trains.”
Fifteen years later, she looks at the images from a more critical distance, considering the landscapes’ significance in US history. Her interpretations – and those of viewers – will likely keep shifting, just as any other photograph seen by different people over a period of time. “The thing that’s beautiful about every photograph is that they get to change,” she said. “They don’t have fixed meaning; no photograph does.”
