Doug and Mike Starn: Gravity of Light

The first book to celebrate the full breadth of the Starn twins’ innovative photographic career. Defying categorization, Doug and Mike Starn combine traditionally separate disciplines such as science, sculpture, photography, painting, video, and installation. Gravity of Light focuses on the breadth of the Starns’ photographic work, from their critically acclaimed debut in the 1987 Whitney Biennial to their current exploration of light as a requisite for photography and vision and as a symbol of enlightenment. In their most recent installation, large-scale photographs are lit by the Starns’ carbon arc lamp—an adaptation of an 1804 model by British physicist Humphry Davy—which produces a brilliant point of light too dazzling for the naked eye.

James Crump is a curator and writer. Identical twins Doug and Mike Starn grew up in New Jersey and attended School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Today, their work is widely exhibited and represented in major museum collections. Jan Åman is a curator, writer, columnist, and urban activist specializing in contemporary art, urban development, and social phenomena.