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what is x-rayography?
The
use of X-rays in art, is surprisingly enough,
not new. In fact, it is part of the rich history
of photography that started almost two hundred
years ago.
Photography,
as the name suggests, is essentially the act of
drawing with photons. Its origins lie in the desire
for two-dimensional artists to improve upon art
and to directly imprint images with exposure to
light. Before the discovery of x-rays, light and
photons were considered different entities and
the "wave vs. particle" theories had
not yet been settled. The first photographic image
was made in 1826 by a Frenchman named Joseph Niépce
(who patriotically changed his name during the
French Revolution to Nicéphore Niépce, the name
that he is today known under as the inventor of
the internal combustion engine), although the
first usable image made with light (i.e. photons)
was made by Daguerre in 1839. Daguerreotypes,
as they are now known, were used for portraits,
landscapes, documentation, and even scientific
subjects. The ability to make colored photos did
not exist then, so they were often painted in
to simulate color. Since color photography is
a rather recent discovery, this practice was carried
on well into the 20th c. as well. Something that
many of us will remember from our childhood is
the painting of postcards with translucent paints
so that the black and white photograph behind
the paint would show through.
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| Louis
Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851) |
daguerrotype
taken by Daguerre (1851) |
Painted
Postcard (1932) |
In
1875 the process of capturing light onto a photographic
medium had reached a level where the medium was sensitive
enough to capture multiple images of a galloping horse
giving rise to the possibility of simulating moving
pictures. Unfortunately, however, it is science, in
particular science for the purpose of gaining a military
advantage over one’s enemy that drives new discoveries.
Hence, photographic research was most often constrained
to military, scientific and medical uses and the use
of photography for artistic purposes did not much benefit
from scientific support. As the battlefield saw many
casualties, the need for a camera that could see inside
the body – to set bones, find shrapnel, etc. – was needed.
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| Sequential
images of the same galloping horse showing the rapid
succession of captured images |
It
just so happened that that two new discoveries were
made in 1895 by a gentleman named Roentgen. He discovered
that photographic emulsions are sensitive not only to
regular light, but to light traveling at other frequencies,
especially x-rays. He was interested in x-rays in particular
because he had also discovered that these could traverse
organic matter like human skin. Since the human body
has different densities (skin, bones, cartilage), the
differences in them could then be captured in gradations
by the photographic medium behind the subject. These
discoveries were of paramount importance to non-military
scientific and cultural progress:
- Doctors
could now determine the severity of an ulcer or cancer
without having to operate or could locate a hairline
fractures in a tibia.
- Scientists
could now look deeper than with a microscope and could
affect the chemical properties of matter.
- And
finally, artists now had a whole new artform to explore.
It opened the door to a whole new dimension in art,
one who's surface has just been scratched with x-rays
and that could witness far more development with other
forms of light. For example, what if one could make
an x-ray that could not only reveal the inside structure
of an organism but also slightly change the chemical
composition of the organism in the process and all
this was captured by the photographic medium?
In 1905 Einstein showed that photons were actually similar
in properties to light but modified to undulate at a
much higher frequency. Simplified, the process could
be described as directing light through an object to
see its inner structure, essentially ‘drawing with light.'
Viewed in this light (pardon the play on words), there
is nothing strange or outrageous about x-rays.
In
1925, scientists who had access to what were then astronomically
priced government-owned x-ray machines, developed a
few images for personal artistic purposes. True to the
scientific mind, or perhaps due to pressing other concerns,
these were not sold or marketed and were kept merely
as ‘office art.’ Occasionally this is still done by
doctors and scientists today. Then, in the early 1930’s,
one such scientist, dr. Dain Tasker, a pioneer in the
use of x-rays as art, made beautiful images of flowers.
This was quite unique, but in the turbulent years that
followed, the art was overshadowed by other events and
so their use as art was forgotten for a while. Ironically,
when these same images were found again, they were hailed
as a historical milestone and auctioned off in New York
for over $25,000 each.
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X-ray
by Dr. Dain Tasker
(1930) |
'Positive'
developped from
the x-ray at left by Tasker |
Bearded
Iris by Tasker
(1931) |
There
are a few other artists today who use x-ray machines
to develop images of flowers. They are often dentists
or doctors who have access to such equipment. Some are
even satisfied in just using the x-ray negative (similar
to those used in hospitals to set bones) as the art
itself… Albert’s x-rayography is very different. He
composes his images poetically by positioning the flowers
or shells in ways that tell a story or remind one of
an adage. He only uses the x-ray ‘negative’ to develop
the ‘positive,’ using a specialized projector that he
designed just for this purpose. Once developed, he only
keeps the best pieces, the ones without flaws, somber
patches, or overexposures – sometimes only one in ten
images is usable. Then he paints the composition in
with the same translucent paints used over a century
ago on daguerreotypes and postcards. The result is a
beautiful union between passionate art and regimented
science, monochrome depth and colorful surfaces, philosophical
insight and pragmatic distance....
On
a purely pragmatically level, the result is also an
image that will not fade like a painting, or discolor
over time like a computer-generated print. Each piece
is a true painted photograph, one of only fifty of each
type. After fifty are produced, the x-ray is retired
and no new photographs are made from that negative.
Like Roentgen and Tasker’s x-rays, they will provide
centuries of beauty and value to their owner, and piece
of the historical record of art history.
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