Clad in a gleaming silver suit and helmet, a figure stands before a metallic structure with glowing cross-shaped lights piercing the evening darkness—a striking scene that recalls the innovative spirit embodied by Black Dog Online’s Starstruck: An American Tale, reminiscent of the thought-provoking installations often showcased at Lehigh University Art Galleries in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
A person in a dark hoodie stands inside an empty, bright church with wooden pews and arched windows in the background, evoking the contemplative atmosphere found in Black Dog Online’s “Starstruck: An American Tale.”.
Photo of five people standing apart on grass in front of a large stone building at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—next to a page of text titled “Director’s Foreword” in an open book against a light background. The scene is associated with Lehigh University Art Galleries and features artist Shimon Attie from *Starstruck: An American Tale* by Black Dog Online.
An open book, Starstruck: An American Tale by Black Dog Online, displays a left page with text and a right page featuring a photograph of a metal transmission tower against a clear blue sky, framed by treetops—an image evocative of the industrial landscape near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, home to the Lehigh University Art Galleries.
An older woman wearing a choir robe with a cross stands in the center of an empty church sanctuary, facing the camera—a poignant scene that evokes the atmosphere of Starstruck: An American Tale by Black Dog Online, reminiscent of works exhibited at Lehigh University Art Galleries in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Open book titled “Starstruck: An American Tale” by Black Dog Online, displaying two evocative photographs—on the left page, a person in a reflective suit at an industrial site; on the right, a person in dark clothing standing before a stone building on grass. These striking images are part of a series exhibited by Lehigh University Art Galleries in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Open book showing a page of text on the left and a sepia-toned photograph of a large historic building on the right, with a grassy area in the foreground; the image from Starstruck: An American Tale by Black Dog Online evokes the industrial past of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, reminiscent of works exhibited at Lehigh University Art Galleries and artists such as Shimon Attie.

Starstruck: An American Tale

$31.00 $42.00
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Shimon Attie (Author)

Nicholas Sawicki, William B Crow, Hannah Klemm, Ed Simon (Contributors)

Hardback, 28 × 23 cm | 11 × 9 in, 128 pages

ISBN 978-1-912165-53-7

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Starstruck: An American Tale maps the artist Shimon Attie’s newest project, a cut through the layers of America past and present at the site of the historic steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The monograph documents Attie’s multi-year project of excavating stories of the city by filming community members, clothed in contemporary and historical dress, transiting iconic local buildings and topography – and the resulting exhibition at the Lehigh University Art Galleries, anchored by a two-channel video and a modified scaled facsimile of Bethlehem’s 90-foot-tall lighted sculptural representation of the biblical Star of Bethlehem, a civic project from the 1930s that overlooks the city to this day. The book is published together with the Lehigh University Art Galleries.


From the city’s founding by Moravian Christian utopian settlers in 1741, through to its industrial heyday in the late 19th to 20th centuries as a capital of the American steel industry, to the collapse of its steel mill and manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequent post-industrial reincarnation with a new casino and gambling, Bethlehem is a microcosm of America’s hopes and dreams, failures and realities. Starstruck: An American Tale probes this uneasy, distinctly American blend of utopian aspirations, industrial capitalism and the dream of “making it big”, that has defined life in Bethlehem and other “rust belt” towns across the United States since the country’s founding.