Hindenburg with Pipe Clamps
- Medium
- Gelatin silver prints on ortho film and pipe clamps
- Dimensions
- Each: 139 × 89 cm (54 3/4 × 35 1/16 in.); Overall: 139 × 186.6 × 42 cm (54 3/4 × 73 1/2 × 16 9/16 in.)
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
photographic techniquesphotographyphotographic processesblack-and-white photographygelatin silver (developing-out-paper) prphotographphotographic process
About
Best known for reassembling sliced or torn photographs into larger compositions, identical twins Mike and Doug Starn have worked collaboratively since they were teenagers. Their work has been described as an attempt to make “beauty out of the junky side of photography—all that stuff lying around the floor of graphic-arts printers.” With their “pipe clamp” works, begun in 1989, the Starns print directly onto ortho film, connect each work, and bow the film to create sculptural forms: photographic assemblage in three dimensions. The tension and drama of this piece matches that of the subject: the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, when a German passenger airship exploded in New Jersey.
