Saturday, January 30, 2010

Radiography as Art

“Not to reproduce what we can already see, but to make visible what we cannot.”
- Paul Klee, on Art (Rajchman, 2000, p. 124)

Shell X-ray #1 (theorem, 2004)
Radiography is an art. Radiographers become technically artistic when they are innovative or creative in adapting routine procedures (Carlton & Adler, 2006, p.221). Some take the meaning of radiography as art more literally. There are many radiographer-artists who use radiography as an artistic medium. Radiography has been used to produce images of flowers, fruit, shells, fish, and other plants and animals, while some artists capture images of much larger things like airplanes and buses.
17 years after the discovery of x-rays, in 1913, Floral radiography was created and published by P. Goby (Raikes, 2003). In 1925, scientists with access to x-ray machines began producing images for artistic purposes. One of these individuals, Dr. Dain Tasker is seen as a pioneer in the use of x-rays as an artistic medium. Tasker created images of flowers. His radiographs were forgotten. When they were found, they were auctioned in New York for over $25,000 each (Koetsier, n.d.). Still today, individuals with access to radiography equipment create images of objects as art. For example, Flickr users Surfactant and theorem.
Wide Open Lotus (Tasker, n.d.)
Nick Veasey is an artist who has pursued artistic radiography as his métier. He produces work for commercial clients in advertising, as well as sells his works to private buyers. Veasey works out of a lab that is used by day in non-destructive testing of pipes. He doesn’t radiograph anything living because the exposures he uses in order to get high resolution images are minutes long and could induce disease or death in live subjects. 



Plane (Veasey, n.d.)
When Veasey images really large objects, like this Boeing 777, he takes many radiographs, and then stitches them together using photoshop. In order to image objects with varying thicknesses, he images the object at different energies, and then layers the images on top of one another to create the image. Using a higher kV allows for better penetration of the thicker parts of the object, but results in a loss of definition of thinner parts. This can burn out some of the fine details on smaller objects like shells as evident in some amateur shell radiography

The people in Veasey’s radiographs are actually all the very same skeleton. In the 60s student radiographers learned to take radiographs using cadavers. Although they are no longer used, Veasey has access to one of these cadavers, who he calls Frieda (Veasey, 2009). Frieda is old, fragile, falling apart, and is held together in a rubber suit (Ridgeway, 2009).
While Veaey’s artistic works are fairly diversified, some artists take a more homogenous approach. William Conklin (1994), published an entire book of radiographs of shells. The internal structure of 49 molluscs and a sand dollar are revealed in his book, The Radiographic World of William Conklin. Shells are a common subject of radiography art. This is likely because of their intricate and beautiful inner structure which is invisible unless the shell is broken or cut open or radiographed. 
Albert Koetsier, another radiographer-artist converts the radiograph negative to a positive, using a projector that he designed himself. He colors the images with translucent paints, similar to those used before color photography was invented to color photographs (Koetsier, n.d.). 
Fragments of Eternity: Tulip Composition (Koetsier, n.d.)
Other radiographer artists include Steven Meyers, Leslie Wright, Hugh Turvey, Albert Richards

A radiograph of a flower is best imaged using a small focal spot and 10-50kV with a beryllium window. Standard radiography units operate at a minimum of 60 kV and the inherent filtration removes the desirable lower energy photons. A mammography unit might be more suited than a general unit. However, the highest quality images of these delicate structures are produced using specimen radiographic units. These units are designed for imaging small objects and operate with small focal spots, low kV, low mA, and long exposure times. Using long exposure times and low kV allows for adequate film darkening without changing the penetration or kV of the beam (Raikes, 2003). 
Using screens decreases the resolution of the radiograph. For this reason, using screens can be undesirable in the radiography of small specimens because the detail is seen as beautiful (Raikes, 2003). To image a shell using only a film, an exposure of 12000mAs and 40 kV are used (Surfactant, 2007). Film only detects 0.65% of the incident radiation. Conversely, using a screen-film system at 80kV, about 30% of the incident radiation would be detected by the film (Kanal, 2007).

Artistic radiography uses the same principles we use in medical radiography. However, it is done with a different objective. While those performing artistic radiography seek to create a new way of seeing, those performing diagnostic radiography seek to identify the presence or lack of disease or abnormality. Nevertheless, both make the invisible visible.

Carlton, R. R., & Adler, A. M. (2006). Principles of radiographic imaging: An art and a science, 4th ed. United States of America: Thompson Delmar Learning


Conchologists of America, inc. (2010). Book reviews: Inner Dimensions, The Radiographic World of William Bonklin, by William Conklin. Retrieved from http://www.conchologistsofamerica.org/articles/reviews/9512.asp#c
Conklin, W. (1994). Inner Dimensions: The Radiographic World of William Conklin. Wrs Pub.
Kanal, K. (2007). Screen-Film Radiography. Retrieved from http://courses.washington.edu/radxphys/Lectures07-08/Screen-Film_Radiography-070823.pdf
Koetsier, A. (n.d.) Beyond Light: The Art of X-rayography. Retrieved from http://www.beyondlight.com/whatis.html
McMillan, J. (2001). The X-ray art of photographer Judith McMillan. Retrieved from http://www.judithkmcmillan.com/
Rajchman, J. (2000). The Deleuze connections. United States of America: MIT Press
Raikes, M. C. (2003). Floral radiography: Using X rays to Create Fine Art. Radiographics, 23(5), 1149-1154.
Ridgeway, A. (2009, March). X-treme X-ray. BBC Focus Magazine. 60-66.
Tasker, D. (n.d.). Wide Open Lotus.  Still Life. Panopticon Gallery. Retrieved from http://www.panopt.com/images-new.php?c=3
Veasey, N. (2009). Nick Veasey: Exposing the invisible. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/nick_veasey_exposing_the_invisible_1.html
Veasey, N (n.d.). X-RAY. Retrieved from http://www.nickveasey.com

5 comments:

  1. Great blog post, I love the x-ray of the lotus it is simply beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your comment! I agree, the lotus is quite pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have one of your early photographs (1993), chambered nautilus, and love it. It hangs in my beach house on the ocean at Emerald Isle, NC.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would like to get something for my wall!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I lovef your version of the history of this art, laughing out loud to your descritives! Thank-you!

    ReplyDelete