Structure of Thought 15, Doug Starn; Mike Starn

Exhibition Label: "Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture," Mar-2009, Steve Goddard A large body of work by Mike and Doug Starn, The Absorption of Light, includes four groupings: Black Pulse (images of the vascular structure of leaves); Attracted To Light (primarily macroscopic views of moths); Structure of Thought (images of neurons and silhouetted trees); and Toshodaiji (images of the historical Buddhist figures Gyoki and Ganjin). An understanding of The Absorption of Light depends on our willingness to accept leaves, moths, trees, and spiritual figures as seekers of light, be it physical light, spiritual light, or light as idea and thought. In a conversation published in Nomenus Quarterly, the artists (speakers “one” and “two”) explain: Speaker One: [...] Again, it’s a body made of black, and going back to the classical metaphor of light as information, thought and knowledge. That’s a large part of this work, but really, what happens for us, the reason we call it Structure of Thought is we feel that… Speaker Two: …when you photograph the tree in silhouette, the tree-well… Speaker One: …the hierarchical structure of each branch leading to a smaller branch, leading to a smaller branch, all of that is collapsed, and you get connections that happen everywhere, which is what we feel the brain is like. The structure of thought, your connections can lead you anywhere, and again, that black being the absorption of light. The tree photographed by the Starns for Structure of Thought 15 is a Camperdown Elm (Ulmus glabra ‘Camperdownii’) in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York. This tree was immortalized by the distinguished American poet Marianne Moore in a 1967 poem published in The New Yorker; her poem, “The Camperdown Elm,” was a call to care for the aging and ailing tree, which was menaced at the time by Dutch Elm Disease. Moore wrote, “It is still there, still leafing, Mortal though.”