The American "frontier" is above all a symbolic place and represents freedom. Think of the 'conquest of the west'. Western films, literature and pop culture have made it an open space where one can reinvent oneself, far from the rules of organized society. However, the connected imagery is predominantly male: cowboys, outlaws, explorers and rebels who represent strength, independence and domination of wild space. The work of Justine Kurland fits into this context, as she has reinterpreted this imagery in a radically different way. Between 1997 and 2002, Kurland traveled along the roads and deserts of America, creating images whose protagonists are teenage girls on the run or travelling, set in open and wild landscapes. Kurland herself describes these images as the staging of “a standing army of girls fleeing patriarchal ideals”. In other words, imagine these adolescents as a collective presence that challenges traditional models of femininity and roles imposed by society. The girls are free and fearless, at the same time delicate and aggressive. They do not seem interested in the presence of the camera or the spectator, as if they lived in a world of their own, a sort of ideal world located on the border, in the wild spaces just beyond the suburbs and infrastructures of suburban life. Twenty years later, this series continues to be significant and current, so much so that it has been republished in its entirety, also including unpublished images recently rediscovered. With a short story by Rebecca Bengal, who also wrote for Kristine Potter's book (Dark Waters, again on the theme of the American landscape / the feminine)