The X-Ray as Art February 22, 2010

Nick Veasey's X-ray photographs raise metaphysical questions about how an object's infrastructure corresponds to its external appearance. By stripping away the surface of an object, an X-Ray exposes its inner essence - which can expand the viewer's understanding and perception of the physical object. This is no simple task. Veasey has spent the past 15 years creating these beautiful and provocative pictures. The Englishman works as meticulously on his art as a radiologist does in caring for a patient, spending hours scanning his subject, like the Mini pictured above, piece by piece and then photoshopping the whole together.  Despite the dangers of exposure to high radiation, Veasey works with the same powerful equipment used in hospitals and by security to scan for bombs - and recently built his own $200,000 lead-walled studio. For images of the human figure, Veasey primarily scans skeletons in special rubber suits, or, occasionally, donated corpses in the eight-hour window before the onset of rigor mortis. Part-scientist, part-photographer, Veasey explores the human fascination with the hidden interiors of things. His 2008 book, X-ray: See Through the World Around You, showcases 200 of his best photos over four chapters: Object, Nature, Fashion, Human/Animal. He has photographed everything from a Boeing 777 - which required him to X-ray the plane 500 different times, to a bus filled with skeleton passengers for which he had to painstakingly photoshop in the skeleton scans, to a bat mid-flight.

Veasey has been featured in Time Magazine, Wired Magazine and the BBC Focus Magazine. The X-rayed Mini will appear in the British Collection of Photography. Visit Nick Veasey's website here. Visit Veasey's gallery, Maddox Arts.