X-ray portrait

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The X-ray portrait is an expression created for the art project "X-ray portrait". This art project by Tor Seidel took place as an installation for the first time in 2003 in the Hellerau Festival Hall in Dresden, which had been abandoned by the Soviet troops , and was shown in Zurich and Berlin in 2005 .

The starting point was the consideration that X-rays of the head can in fact not be portraits - because, strictly speaking, a portrait is an image of a surface , that of the face. An X-ray, on the other hand, is based on the effect of what is known as X - ray radiation in German-speaking countries . The radiation passes through a body and casts shadows on a photographic plate from the body parts that absorb this radiation (e.g. bones ) . This x-ray image does not show any surfaces and can usually only be read by specialists, the radiologists . So it doesn't show what a photographic portrait can show, a person and their facial expression. From a scientific point of view, it would not be possible to speak of X-ray portraits.

X-ray portraits

The installation "X-ray portraits" showed enlarged X-ray images of heads as panels . The underlying material is the remnants of a former Soviet military hospital in the Dresden-Hellerau Festival Hall, which was used by the Soviet troops in the GDR era.

Treating the X-ray images like portraits was the result of the observation that the images did not show the typical abstract bone expression, but facial features. Whether this was due to the type of X-ray equipment and the strength of the radiation or the treatment by the Soviet military doctors remained unclear. The " diagnosis " of the material by radiologists and X-ray specialists could not clarify this either. These recordings hung as 150 × 200 cm panel pictures in the festival hall. London sound designer James Welburn wrote a piece for this installation.

When choosing the heads, there are many different expressions: open mouths that are reminiscent of screams, moon-like faces, eye sockets that look like eyes. The expression “X-ray portrait” turned out to be useful when looking at these images and was used to broaden the concept of a portrait and at the same time to indicate an artistic intervention.

X-ray sculptures

In 2005, the “Röntgenportrait” project was invited to Science et Cité in Zurich . The Hellerau images for the so-called X-ray sculptures were used for this installation. The idea was to translate the supposed facial expression of the X-ray images into three-dimensional. This succeeds when the viewer looks through a tube at the sectional calculations, which are arranged one behind the other, creating a three-dimensional body.

The publication "Röntgenportrait"

The book Röntgenportrait was published by Bühler + Heckel Berlin in 2005.

The exhibition organizer Bodo Michael Baumunk ( Deutsches Hygienemuseum Dresden ) is following the trail of a surviving X-ray of the teeth of the Reich President von Hindenburg in the context of his time. The doctor and philosopher Jan Holthues uses the X-ray images to interpret the process of seeing from an epistemological point of view. In his experimental poem, the Dresden writer Marcel Beyer wanders through an imaginary landscape like Dresden - Hellerau . The science researcher Monika Dommann (Zurich) locates the relevance of X-ray images in relation to death. The science researcher and author Michael Hagner (Zurich) looks at attempts to create visibility beyond the visible. He studies the history of mind reading. The Dresden photo historian Wolfgang Hesse regards the X-ray images as images of life before death. Markus Buschhaus ( Düsseldorf ) describes the change in context between medical recordings and art objects.

Conclusion

The art project, the expression "X-ray portrait" and the publication expand the concept of the photographic portrait.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bodo-Michael Baumunk: With Hindenburg at the dentist
  2. ↑ Jan Holthues: Seeing
  3. ↑ Marcel Beyer: Fell
  4. ↑ Monika Dommann: Most surprising resemblance to the skull
  5. ↑ Michael Hagner: The brain mirror and the uncanny

literature

  • Ronald Berg: Röntgenportrait (review) In: Photography Now 03, 2005, ZDB -ID 1452960-9 .
  • Olaf Breidbach : Under the skin. X-ray portraits and shadow images . In: Wolfgang Hesse, Katja Schuhmann (Ed.): Mensch! Photographs from Dresden collections . Jonas-Verlag, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-89445-370-2 , pp. 90-92.
  • Wolfgang Hesse, Katja Schuhmann (Ed.): Mensch! Photographs from Dresden collections . Jonas-Verlag, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-89445-370-2 , (exhibition catalog, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, June 17 to August 28, 2006).
  • Andreas Krase: X-ray sculpture and hand panel .
  • Andreas Krase, Agnes Matthias (Ed.): True signs. Photography and science . Technical Collections, Dresden 2006, ISBN 3-9810636-3-5 , (exhibition catalog, Dresden, Altana Gallery of the Technical Collections of the TU, November 11, 2006 - February 18, 2007).
  • X-ray portrait (review). In: Matthias Bruhn (Ed.): Pictures without a viewer . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-05-004286-9 , ( Image Worlds of Knowledge 4, 2).
  • Tor Seidel, Friederike Meyer: X-ray portrait . Bühler and Heckel Verlag for Science and Art, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-9809237-1-1 .
  • Science day at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2006: panel discussion with the editors of "Röntgenportrait" and various scientists.