cover image Mike and Doug Starn

Mike and Doug Starn

Andy Grundberg. ABRAMS, $49.5 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-3815-1

``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.)