[X-Ray, Broken Right Femur]
"Penetration of the body with light is one of the greatest visual experiences," pronounced the modernist photographer László Moholy-Nagy. The patient subjected to this X-ray might have cause to demur. Even so, the view of their severely fractured femur, seen through a wire-mesh sling, is exactly the sort of image that might have excited Moholy-Nagy and his peers. Following its discovery in 1895, X-radiography was embraced—and its aesthetic imitated—by avant-garde artists then seeking to upend conventional modes of perception. The technology expanded the spectrum of photographic possibility; by probing the dense matter of daily life, it visualized worlds otherwise inaccessible to the eye.
Artwork Details
- Title: [X-Ray, Broken Right Femur]
- Artist: Unknown
- Date: October 14, 1916
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 40 x 29.9 cm (15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005
- Object Number: 2005.100.136
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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