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Richard Barnes
Unabomber Cabin, 1998

Barnes’s interests in archaeological and forensic photography come together in this diptych. The paired pictures relate to the domestic terrorist Theodore Kaczynski, who called himself the Unabomber and waged an antitechnology letter-bombing campaign from the 1970s through the 1990s, targeting scientists across the United States.

The artwork was made during Kaczynski’s trial, which took place two years after his arrest in 1996. The left panel presents the empty, fenced-off site in Lincoln, Montana, where Kaczynski lived in virtual isolation, while the right shows his rudimentary cabin inside a Sacramento crime-lab warehouse. Relocated from its original setting to such controlled environs, the cabin appears transformed: from a simple dwelling into proof of Kaczynski’s aberrant, antisocial behavior.

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Unabomber Cabin
Artist name
Richard Barnes
Date created
1998
Classification
photograph
Medium
dye destruction prints
Dimensions
40 in. × 108 in. (101.6 cm × 274.32 cm)
Date acquired
1999
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Purchase through a gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein
Copyright
© Richard Barnes
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.585.A-B
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Other Works by Richard Barnes

See other works by Richard Barnes

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