{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O1769388"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1769388/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2024NX9346/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2024NX9346/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"low","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2024NX9346","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O1769388","accessionNumber":"PH.1006-2024","objectType":"Photograph","titles":[{"title":"Nudes (Fisting)","type":"assigned by artist"},{"title":"SCUMB Manifesto","type":"series title"}],"summaryDescription":"Inspired by Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto, SCUMB Manifesto introduces us to photographer Justine Kurland’s own uncompromising initiative: the Society for Cutting Up Men’s Books. This work presents a homage to Solanas in the form of photographic collages, which Kurland creates by cutting up and reconfiguring photobooks by male artists, purging her personal library of 150 books by straight white men that have monopolized the photographic canon since the invention of the medium. They include mainly American (almost exclusively Western) artist books, from Stephen Shore’s American Surfaces, William Eggleston’s Los Alamos, Larry Clark’s Tulsa, Alec Soth’s Sleeping By the Mississippi and Robert Frank’s The Americans, challenging notions of art’s patriarchal structure, but also provoking questions around authorship, appropriation and respect.\r\n\r\nIn ‘Nudes (Fisting)’, Kurland tackles the seminal 1991 photobook ‘Nudes’ by Lee Friedlander. Friedlander’s photographs evidence how women’s bodies have become rich subject matter in Western art history, further popularised by Friedlander’s contemporary influences Bill Brandt and Edward Weston.  Their sculptural, often anonymised beauties highlight the historic fetishization and sexualisation of the female nude; presenting a voyeuristic ‘male gaze’ which is provocatively pulled apart by Kurland, in an act of feminist resistance.  Her slicing, dissecting technique reimagines Friedlander’s nudes into a cascade of abstracted shapes; creating something which is conversely monstrous and beautiful, and importantly freed from its original context. \r\n\r\nThe nature of collage —shape shifting, disruptive, defiant, subversive, reparative— has long made it a feminist strategy in life and in art.  Each of Kurland’s unique pieces represents a challenge to art world bias and a reclamation of history. ","physicalDescription":"A photocollage featuring abstracted limbs, forming a rose pattern. ","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Kurland, Justine","id":"AUTH392183"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":"Justine Kurland (1969) was born in Warsaw, New York. As a teenager, she moved to Manhattan with hopes of becoming an artist. She obtained her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1998. Her childhood adventures and nomadic lifestyle have shaped her photographic practice, in particular her works which reference the American road trip and provide an alternative to the hyper masculinity of the American landscape. Her seminal series ‘Girl Pictures’ (1997 – 2002) was inspired by her own experiences of being a teenage runaway and involved casting schoolgirls in highly staged scenes representing a feminist utopia. A book of the work was published by MACK in 2020. The birth of her son in 2004 shifted her focus towards motherhood and was published in a book titled ‘The Train’ in 2024. Her recent series, SCUMB Manifesto, continues to make space for women by transforming books by canonized male photographers through the destruction and reparation of photocollage. "}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":"‘I wanted the cutting to be punk, but nothing could be fussier than hours of sustained concentration, dissecting and reassembling tiny scraps of paper, trying to create the most beautiful thing possible.’ \r\nJustine Kurland, 2023"}],"materials":[],"techniques":[{"text":"photo montage","id":"THES394855"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Photographic collage","categories":[{"text":"Feminism","id":"THES48955"},{"text":"Women artists","id":"THES387590"},{"text":"Crafting","id":"THES393481"},{"text":"Photography","id":"THES394546"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"DOP","id":"THES291628"},"images":["2024NX9346"],"imageResolution":"low","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"101","id":"THES49933"},"free":"","case":"WW","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"photographs","id":"AAT46300"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"2023","earliest":"2023-01-01","latest":"2023-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Acquired as part of The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project ","dimensions":[],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Photographic collage by Justine Kurland, 'Nudes (Fisting)', collage from photobooks, 2023","bibliographicReferences":[],"production":"This piece is made from cut pages of Lee Friedlander's book 'Nudes' (Pantheon Books, 1991), published to accompany an exhibition of 52 works from the series at the Museum of Modern Art. \r","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[{"text":"","id":""}],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[{"text":"<i>American Photographs</i> (V&amp;A, June 2025 - May 2027)\n\nJustine Kurland (born 1969)\r\n<i><b>Nudes (Fisting),</b></i>\r\nfrom the series <i>SCUMB Manifesto</i>\r\n2023\r\n\nKurland’s photographic collages are made from photobooks in her personal library, cut up as liberation from the male artists who have monopolised photographic history. This collage deconstructs Lee Friedlander’s <i>Nudes</i> (1991), a book of nude portraits of women. By transforming Friedlander’s pictures into a cascade of abstracted shapes, Kurland frees these bodies from the male gaze of the photographer.\r\n\nCollage from photobooks\r\nMuseum no. PH.1006-2024\r\n\nAcquired as part of The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project","date":{"text":"2025","earliest":"2025-01-01","latest":"2025-12-31"}},{"text":"Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage (V&amp;A Publishing, spring 2026)\n\nInspired by Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, photographer Justine Kurland presents her own uncompromising initiative: the Society for Cutting Up Men’s Books. Kurland purged her personal library of 150 photobooks by straight white men, creating new works from the fragments. Nudes (Fisting) is extracted from Lee Friedlander’s seminal 1991 photobook, Nudes. These sculptural, often anonymized beauties highlight the historic fetishization and sexualization of the female nude. In an act of feminist resistance, Kurland dismembers the voyeuristic ‘male gaze’. Her technique of slicing and dissecting transforms Friedlander’s nudes into a cascade of abstracted shapes, creating something which is conversely monstrous and beautiful, and crucially freed from its original context. Kurland’s collages offer a counter-narrative to patriarchal art histories, while provoking important questions around authorship, appropriation and respect.\r\n","date":{"text":"27/11/2025","earliest":"2025-11-27","latest":"2025-11-27"}}],"partNumbers":["PH.1006-2024"],"accessionNumberNum":"1006","accessionNumberPrefix":"PH","accessionYear":2024,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-04-13","recordCreationDate":"2023-11-21","availableToBook":false}}