Radical X-Ray Art

"QUANTUM SHOT" #162(rev) Link - by Avi Abrams From Gothic to Eerily Beautiful If you have nothing to hide... or if you did not had to go through airport security screenings too often in the recent past, then you will be really thrilled to see a bunch of X-ray photos, creatively transformed into art. Here are a few examples of this newly burgeoning stylistic - with a morbid predominance of bones and skeletons (for an obvious reason) and some unexpectedly flowery designs wrought on a dark x-ray film medium: (left image credit: Bert Myers, right - Nick Veasey) Exploring unusual media of X-rays (ideally suited for his dark, H. R. Giger-inspired compositions), Yury Shpakovski creates stunningly intricate, sophisticated works. See his site for more examples and to order prints. (images credit: Yury Shpakovski) X-Ray Nature Photography When used as art, X-rays seem to reveal the hidden beauty of natural forms, structures and symmetry not visible to the human eye, the world of ephemeral and eerie shapes - of which we are largely unaware... Judith McMillan's flowers & plants: (images credit: Judith McMillan) George Green's various seashells: (images credit: George Green) (images credit: Steven Meyers) Flowers "Kiss": (image credit: Nick Veasey) And then there is... a human kiss: (images credit: Wim Delvoye) Wim's site is full of creative projects; one can get lost there for hours... Here is a gothic combination of X-ray shots and stained glass (there is something spiritual in this...) (images credit: Wim Delvoye) X-Ray Stingray looks even more radical than a live one Not only is this a mesmerizing and wonderful picture, but the whole new species - Amazon Freshwater "Pancake" Stingray - has been just discovered, more info. "It tells us is that there are quite likely to be other large fishes in the Amazon yet to be discovered and described": (X-ray of Heliotrygon gomesi, preadult male. Credit: Ken Jones, via) See-through Technology An ordinary thing, such as a laptop keyboard, can be imbued with ethereal beauty, thanks to X-ray photography (try to tell it to the Airport Security, these guys are largely immune to such sentiments): (image credit: Nick Veasey) Photographer Nick Veasey has a lot more technological X-ray marvels on this site (some of them can even reveal how things work): (images credit: Nick Veasey) See more at this National Geographic's gallery. Enhancing X-Ray Reality... ... with his own drawings: Dutch artist Ben Kruisdijk is adding flowers to X-ray photos, making human bones bloom from inside out - (images credit: Ben Kruisdijk) Thinking of teddy bears - (image credit: Ben Kruisdijk) I see what you ate here Here is a picture of some poor cat swallowed whole by a python - more info: (image via) What have you listened to recently? (The Big Brother knows): (images credit: Nick Veasey) This last image reminds me of a strange fact in the history of underground rock music in Soviet Russia. During the "stagnation decades" of the 1970s and 80s there were very few official rock music records, so rock-hungry fans had to invent another way to get their musical fix. Photography studios at the time had the technology to etch sound grooves into photographic prints. These round photographs were called "Memories from the Beach", or "Musical Postcard". Soon communists noticed unnaturally long line-ups to photo studios and a huge demand for a glossy photographic paper. Eventually, when the photographic paper disappeared from Soviet stores, ever-so-creative music fans started using x-ray prints from local clinics (there were plenty of used prints available)... And so the story of Russian rock music was literally written on the "skulls and bones" of X-ray prints. Perhaps this little story will inspire modern artists to use this dark and glossy medium with renewed enthusiasm. READ THE REST OF OUR ART CATEGORY -> Share Tweet