Snapshots of Girlhood via Justine Kurland’s Girl Pictures, by Colleen Fox Breen

Snapshots of Girlhood via Justine Kurland’s Girl Pictures 

Welcome Home 
Two girls walk up the pebblestone steps bordered by a well-groomed, pristine green grass lawn. The front door of the two-story, red brick house is framed by two fake shrubs in antiquated pot-vases. There is a door-knocker on the stained-brown door. You cannot see what the girls are wearing because their clothes are pasted to their stick bodies with mud. Their hair is also caked in mud, and there are droplets of dried mud behind them. 

Feminine Hygiene 
Two girls washing their hair in a river. Purple and white sports bras, black and blue sports shorts. One has her head turned upside-down and dipped into the river. The other is working the suds into a mohawk. 

Parking Lot Dance Parties 
Two girls-- one with short hair whipped out like helicopter blades, covering her turned head, arms stretched to the sky, feet together and off the ground; the other with hair cut close to her head, legs apart, knees bent, hips jutted out to one side, mouth wide, singing a song. They are in the parking lot of a series of storefronts. 

Get Out The Way 
Two girls leaning out from either side of a tan-gold Jeep Patriot, screaming at an Elk lying in the middle of the dirt road. 

Congratulations 
Girls dancing in a circle at a graduation party, all wearing black. 

Land of Plenty 
Three girls are laughing hysterically as one passes a bag of freeze-dried chili to another. Behind them is a silver tarp held to the ground by three rocks, tied to a nearby pole. Beneath the tarp are three sleeping bags. They’re in a desert canyon that reveals no sky. 

Buried Alive 
A girl is wrestling out from a hole she’s buried in. Her knees and wrists and head are above the ground- rope visibly wrapped around her wrists. Two girls stand nearby, watching her indifferently in combat boots, one Parquet Courts t-shirt, one black wife-beater, holding two dirt-caked shovels. 

Heights
One girl climbs up a ledge to the top of the canyon. Another girl photographs her climb from above. A third girl on another ledge nearby. None wear shoes. 

Shields 
A girl walks in the woods with a turtle shell and a bag strapped to her backpack, the translucent bag filled with other bones. She wears pink-brown corduroy pants and a peach t-shirt tied in a knot above her belly button. 

Faces 
Two girls without shirts lean over to make their bellies bulge, each holding her rolls between both hands to make belly-mouths. They’ve drawn eye shapes around their nipples. 

Kiddie Crossings 
Five girls walk through a park surrounded by brightly colored signs and tables and children running around in brightly colored clothes. One pulls a cigarette out of a pack of American Spirit light blues, another two are pulling drags, one is laughing with smoke spilling out of her teeth, and the final looks at the laughing girl with a smirk, her light blue hanging with her arms by her waist. 

Branded 
A girl tattoos the name “JESSI” onto another girl’s ass. The girl tattooing has an ass that reads “COLLEEN.” The three girls watching nearby also have hands covered in indigo ink. The tattoo gun is made of a needle and thread taped to a topless electric toothbrush. 

Wild Things 
Two girls hang upside-down from respective tree limbs with tiger masks painted on their faces. 

PSA 
One girl on the sill of a porch, naked in the public apartment complex. She holds a bottle of Jameson. Another girl wears a white t-shirt and a soft pink pair of briefs, and the other wears a navy blue sports bra and black jeans. The two girls are kissing, and the naked girl on the sill is giving an animated speech. 

Of Montreal 
Girls dancing in a circle outside a small concert venue. All the other people outside are talking or smoking. 

Post Eruption 
Two girls sprinting down a steep trail of a volcano in the middle of a violent storm. 

Girls Don’t Drink Whiskey 
Two girls with their heads tipped back, shooting shots of a nearby bottle of Jameson. The third dumps the Jameson down her throat from the bottle, staring down a pan-faced young boy. 

Sisterhood of of the Traveling Pants 
Two girls wear a massive, poppy-red, floor-length dress at the same time. Their middle ankles are tied together, middle arms invisible. 

Accomplished Feats 
Two girls lay in each other’s arms, one leaning back into the lap of the other, in a full bathtub. The third is climbing up the bathroom doorway, pressing on the inside of the doorframe with her bare feet and hands. The other two girls watch her climb. 

Side of the Highway 
A girl is squatted down and peeing as another is kneeling down to take a photograph of her pee-puddle, and the third is doubled over in laughter by a crack in the earth, teeny blades of grass pushing through. All that is visible around them is sky and sand. 

Feminine Hygiene 2 
Four girls shoved into a bathroom where the bathtub contains a grey-brown film around the bottom third, one cockroach near the drain, and a face-down baby doll. One girl in the midst of violently brushing out her hair with a thin comb. Another leaning over the counter to put brown lipstick on in only her underwear and a pair of three-inch platform boots. Another sits on the toilet, reaching down to wipe between her black-yellow-and-white floral dress, a toothbrush hanging from her mouth. The final throws a black, lacy dress over her head-- one foot dyed royal purple. 

Howler 
A girl at the top of a wooden windmill without a shirt, the O of her lips upturned to the sky. A group of boys below, all looking confused. A girl below, head thrown back to the sky in laughter. 

Celebration 
One girl kisses another girl’s nose as the other kisses her chin at a New Year’s party, surrounded by bustling other bodies. Each wears a glittery dress. 

Sensible 
One girl points at a patch of moss, her mouth in mid-sentence, the other presses her hands into the patch- water dripping through her fingers. 

Slippery Slope 
Two girls on all fours climb up a steep trail, one behind the other, each wearing boots and gloves, the trail completely covered in ice. 

Beneath The Train Tracks 
Girls dancing in a circle around a bonfire, a burning couch at the centre. 

High Stakes 
Two girls involved in a vicious game of cards, eyes wild, marker drawings all over their faces, in the cafe of an art museum. 

Throw Em’ Back 
A girl in a pale, flowery dress and no shoes bends over to pick up a dead silver-dollar fish off a dock. She has two others in her opposite palm. 

Feminine Hygiene 3 
Two girls in a mirror that reads Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning To Work. The faucet is running. One girl slathers foamy soap onto her stubbly armpit. The other is brushing her teeth with her finger. There is a makeup bag on the counter, a tube of mascara peeking out. 

Structure 
Four girls in mid-topple over a game of Twister, three shouting or gasping, the fourth with her teeth bared in laughter. 

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 
Three girls wearing one oversized cable-knit sweater. All girls wear the same shade of red-brown lipstick. 

Burn the Witch 
Girls dancing and jumping around a burning shirt on the ground, all screaming at the fire. 

Crash 
One girl floating in a natural pool, arms and legs spread wide. A ten-foot waterfall crashing ten-ish feet above her head. Chest bare at the surface. Weightless. 

Dreamless 
Four girls in a pile of blankets, piled on top of one another, limbs wrapped and stacked and intertwined. Waffle-style hand-holding. Wearing jeans and skirts and dresses and lipstick and mascara with bangs and buzzes and lengthy locks and socks. All with their eyes closed. 

Colleen Fox Breen

Colleen Fox Breen (she/her) is a writer, editor, art historian, and film photographer. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, a BA in literary journalism from Hampshire College, and is a candidate for her MA in art history at Lindenwood University. Her creative and academic work focuses on the relationships between humans and the nonhuman world, with particular interests in magical realism, climate fiction, American landscape painting, and regenerative Earth art. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her dog, Fable.