Images | x-rayproject.org

Injuries to Hips, Knees and Legs

1. Multiple hex nuts in pelvis

2. Enlargement of hip injury and broken femur

3. Hex nut in spine

4. Nails in knee

5. Both femurs (thigh bones) are broken in multiple places and many pieces of shrapnel in thighs

6. Many pieces of shrapnel in leg

Magnification images of hip and severely broken leg, many hex nuts, terror attack

Series of Magnification Images of Hip and Severely Broken Leg

Top 3: Series of magnification images of hip and severely broken leg and multiple hex nuts (Center and top Right show artery damage)

Bottom: Broken calf bone and artery damage

40x32" Duratrans film

Portrait Study 30x32"

Smashed Hand and Arm With Life Threatening Artery Damage 42x30" Duratrans film

Two views of same indvidual with shrapnel in brain, and brain swelling

Top: CT axial image showing fragments in the brain, internal bleeding and severe swelling

Bottom: Metal in brain

16x32"

nails and hex nuts often used in suicide vests

Shrapnel, common household objects packed into bombs 11x14 Plexiglass box

X-Ray View of Multiple Hex Nuts in Pelvis

CT scan segments show relative locations.

1. CT scan: metal in left flank at level of kidney

2. CT scan: metal in left flank at upper pelvis

Top middle: metal embedded in left pelvis bone just above hip joint

4. CT scan: metal in hip bone with fracture, "black air" at entry point

5. CT scan: metal in hip bone with fracture, "black air" at entry point

This x-ray was necessary because a hex nut from a terrorist bomb tore into the calf bone of a civilian. We do not know if the victims is Jewish, Muslim, Christian or a member of some other faith, nor do we know the victim's age, gender or socio-economic status. We don't know how the victim happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Artists have always commented on war and violence. Goya’s portfolio, The Disasters of War, is perhaps the most graphic, but there are examples from the ancient Greeks through Picasso’s Guernica and beyond. And almost as soon as it became technically possible, the studio of photographer Mathew Brady made a record of the Civil War, including hundreds of images of soldiers in battle and in death. This tradition has continued throughout every conflict to the present day.

Photography is a way of making an image by drawing with the very light that the objects reflect, so when we look at photographs from the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, we see something very close to the horror of the scenes as they appeared to the photographer. We see records of actual events.

Modern medicine draws not with the visible light spectrum that we use in photography, but with electro-magnetic radiation - X-rays and CT scans – and with this we can see inside the human body.

Apart from the relentless need to see reality, artists also want to comment upon it. In the early part of the 20th century, artists began to piece together common objects that didn’t belong together, examining new meanings from the new combinations. Marcel DuChamp famously mounted a bicycle wheel onto a footstool, rendering them both useless. These were thought pieces, verbal and visual jokes.

The X-rays and CT scans in this exhibit are new ways to make figurative images and portraits. They represent life in the modern cross-section of these artistic traditions – both the desire to observe and describe reality with the most modern techniques available, and the need to think and talk about it. All of these images are the by-products of terrorism, which is a war on a civilian population. Terrorists pack their bombs with common objects – hex nuts, bolts, nails, watches – all meant for peaceful, utilitarian purposes. By blasting them into human beings, they create the madness of our times.

50x40" Duratrans film

radiograph of male and female terror attack victims

Man and Woman, Terror Attack Victims 30x32"

radiographs of adult terror attack victims

Figure Studies 32x40"

Very sick child, pulmonary edema, screws in left arm and chest wall

A Very Sick Child

Pulmonary edema (fluid in lungs), screws in left arm and chest wall

CT scan and x-rays, injuries to children, terror attacks

1-3 Head injury to 4 year old child, shrapnel penetrating skull

4-5 Hex nuts in foot and leg of 16 year old, fractures

6 (Left) Shrapnel in brain of 17 year old

Piece: 32x40"

shrapnel in abdomen near liver and kidney, x-rays terror victms

40x32" Duratrans film

Left: Metal fragment in right side of abdomen at level of liver and right kidney, shrapnel, right, lower abdomen, metal in pelvis

Right: Curved metal fragments at level of left kidney, and shrapnel in right upper pelvis

radiographs of head trauma, terror attack

Head Trauma - 3 views of the same individual

Hex nut in area of armpit, metal in chest, collapsed lung

Hex nut in area of armpit and chest x-ray

Left: Two hex nuts in the axila (armpit) Possible artery and nerve damage

Right: Three metal objects in chest, collapsed lung (see chest tube) Air in chest wall at entry point

40x32" Duratrans

Left: Frontal view of nail in right chest wall

Right: Lateral view of nail in right chest wall

32x40" Duratrans

child with damage to feet from terror attack

Left: Child 8-10 years old Right: Ball bearing on foot

40x32" Duratrans film

Smashed arm, leg and foot, vctim of terror

Smashed Arm, Damaged Leg, Broken Foot

Left: Large piece of shrapnel, comminuted, angulated fracture of the distal radius

Right: Lateral view of ankle, multiple fragments of shrapnel, leg and foot broken in multiple places, fractured distal tibia, and fifth metatarsal and cuboid.

Duratrans image 32x40"