Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Shows the Starn Twins' unique approach to photography in a selection of their photographic collages and assemblages.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Their complex and arresting use of multi-media imagery has made the Starn twins the wunderkinds of the contemporary art world. They work as a unit, appropriating and recasting subject matter from a broad pool of art historical sources. Generally they begin with photographic images and add paper, plastic, chemicals, and other elements to treat their composition. Starn topics range from details of organic forms to double takes of persons or objects. They made a stir at the Whitney Biennial of 1987, and New York Times photography critic Grundberg's text continues this adulation on a grand scale: his monograph is a clearcut attempt to anchor their reputations as modern stars of the art scene; an introductory essay by eminent art historian Robert Rosenblum takes a similar approach. Fortunately, the Starn brothers' work is vivid and interesting enough to justify this attitude, and the plates in this book do justice to their collaboration. Recommended for art school libraries and contemporary art collections-- Paula A. Baxter, NYPL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

``The Starn Twins'' are relatively new to the art world yet have been featured in Boston and New York shows and in the 1987 Whitney Biennial, which established them as promising talents and an innovative force. These young men have challenged traditional photography by cutting, tinting, creasing, tearing and reassembling prints. Their emphasis on building up surfaces with layered materials and tape, quoting portions of paintings by old masters such as Rembrandt and da Vinci, and maintaining a beauty in their work reminiscent of romanticism is highlighted in this collection of 92 of their pieces, all reproduced in color. The wonderful prints of finished work and the black-and-white photographs of their Brooklyn studio kindle enthusiasm and admiration. New York Times photo critic Grundberg here interviews the brothers, analyzes the thematic content of their photographic collages and contrasts and compares their work with that of Robert Rauschenberg, Gilbert and George, Joel Peter Witkin and Cindy Sherman. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

This 144-page book has 34 pages of text and notes on the collaborative photographic work of Mike and Doug Starn and includes 92 medium to high-quality color plates reproduced on heavy coated paper in a large format that usually covers one full page or spans two pages. The introduction by Robert Rosenblum and the text by Andy Grundberg (photography critic for The New York Times) are authoritatively written with good notes providing references on the Starn brothers from 1985 to 1989. There is a listing of selected group exhibitions (1984-1990) and of museum collections. The book will be of greatest interest to artists and individuals interested in contemporary uses of photography in art and is not written for general audience. Would find use in public and all academic libraries. -C. Stroh, Kansas State University

Booklist Review

Not yet 30, twins Mike and Doug Starn are one of the recent sensations of the art world, already featured in the Whitney Museum Biennial and selling to major collectors. Their taped, folded, torn, clamped, and patched photographic imagery violates modernist notions of the essential qualities of the medium, and Grundberg posits the strength of their position as being both "Neo-modern" and "Post-modern." Challenging standards about the paper or support behind the photographic image, the Starns bring this aspect to the fore by making self-insistent objects that are increasingly sculptural and large scale. Often their imagery is secondhand, and sometimes there is no imagery at all. Curiously, the pieces that use only blank, toned photographic paper are among their most successful. The Starns claim that for them beauty is foremost: one critical response described their work as "sentimentality . . . to a suffocating extreme": most viewers will find theirs an uncomfortable beauty at best. Grundberg's well-documented essay instructively functions as something of a contemporary fable of art-world success. Notes, chronology, bibliography. ~--Gretchen Garner