Mike & Doug Starn Attracted To Light2003, Powerhouse Books NYfirst editionartist's bookNo dust jacket, as Issued. 120 pages. Artist Book. One of the most beautiful art photography books of our time. The first and only edition, limited to 3000 copies is now rare. An austerely elegant production by Mike and Doug Starn: Coffee table size book. Black covers with photographic reproduction pasted on the cover and titles embossed on the cover and spine, as issued. Introduction by Demetrio Paparoni. Text excerpts from the works of Vladimir Nabokov. Fiction and text selections by Victor Pelevin. Mike and Doug Starn's "Attracted To Light" is, conceptually, their single most beautiful body of work. Showcases the twins' luminous collection of moth photographs and the gravitational pull that light has over them. It is inspired by its mysterious subject as well as Vladimir Nabokov, the greatest Russian novelist of the 20th century, who was a full-fledged lepidopterist. He wrote memorably about and collected moths and butterflies. Living creatures, especially humans, struggle daily to survive, often against great odds. Not moths, which live in order to die. Darwin famously studied moths to prove his paradoxical theory of evolution: A species needs to evolve precisely because it is "one generation only", extremely short-lived, and suicidally attracted to light. "No one understands why they are drawn to light. It's neither to mate nor to eat. They don't eat at all. Some don't even have mouths, are as light as air, choosing to live their lives at night, flying from nowhere towards the end of their fleeting lives to orbit a lamp, fly into a flame, and self-immolate like a Buddhist monk" (Mike and Doug Starn). The Starns' work is in the Permanent Collection of every major museum: The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Maison Europeenne de la Photographie Paris, The National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, and The Yokohama Museum of Art Japan, among others. An absolute "must-have" title for Mike and Doug Starn collectors.
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