2007
Accordion page book with tape
13" x 9"
52 Page 
Edition of 2000

This unique, accordion-folded volume co-published with the artists accompanies the Starns’ exhibition Black Pulse 2000-2007.  The process of photosynthesis—the energy of light chemically transforming into the life force—serves as a rich analogy for the Starns’ work, which has always concerned itself with materiality, re-generation and entropy.  With obvious reference to our own corporeality, the images in this series accentuate the arteries of the leaves, the bold and graphic traces of this essential life function.

The piece is striking in its construction:  in scrolling dual lines atop each page, the Starns’ engage in a poetic, pseudoscientific dialogue about the ideas in the series. The pages are printed on both sides, with the images and text looping around from the last page back to the first, underscoring the flow and ongoing, cyclical nature of the material. Each double-page signature is joined meticulously by transparent tape, emphasizing the physicality and three dimensionality of the surface. An introduction by The Print Center’s Executive Director Elizabeth Spungen and essay by Martin Barnes, senior curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, provide context for this work; it is included in a narrow, map-folded pamphlet inserted in a clear plastic flap on the interior of the volume.

           -- from Aperture’s Curated Book Collection