[X-Ray of a Box Compasses and Drawing Tools]

Shadows streak across an incandescent field, their silhouettes resisting recognition. Though nearly abstract, this image is no modernist exercise in form, but rather an early X-ray showing compasses and drawing tools inside of a closed box. Created within months of the X-ray’s discovery, it is one of the preliminary radiographic experiments recorded by the Belgian scientist Dr. Henri van Heurck, who had begun using fluorescent screens during this period to make X-rays with shortened exposure times. When he published his findings the following year, he chose not to use this image, instead favoring clearer views of human and animal skeletons. Though this striking composition is trickier to discern, it marks Dr. Heurck’s first foray into the new imaging medium at a moment of expanding visibility.

Credit: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005