HOW DO X-RAYS WORK?
As I was basing a large part of this project on the aesthetic of x-ray scans, I thought it would be necessary to look into a simple explanation of how x-ray scans actually work.
So to put it briefly, x-ray scans work as soft materials do not absorb the x-ray radiation, whereas dense materials do. The absorption of the x-ray causes a negative image to be projected onto a photographic plate or the absorption is measured and then used to produce a digital image.
For example with bodily x-rays ‘The beam travels through the air, comes into contact with our body tissues, and produces an image on a metal film. Soft tissue, such as skin and organs, cannot absorb the high-energy rays, and the beam passes through them. Dense materials inside our bodies, like bones, absorb the radiation.‘
Before he bought his first Polaroid camera in 2006 he has been shooting abstract, geometric and minimalist photos with a digital camera. He has a keen eye for hidden color, shape, and form in everyday life, and this itself is the subject he chooses to photograph most often. Because of the way in which he shoots, there is no room for error. There are no negatives, no memory cards, and no post-processing. Each image is exactly as he saw it in real life, and there’s a sense of honesty and beauty to that. Since there are only ten images in each film pack, he has to examine each subject with meticulous detail before taking the shot. More time is taken to consider shape, form, light, color, and subject. His photographs range from the corner of a motel sign to balloons on a ceiling to the words on a neon sign , no subject is left untouched.
He took his earliest photographs in high school, photographing film footage of Audrey Hepburn as it played in a movie theater. After receiving a BA from Saint Paul’s University in Tokyo in 1970, he traveled west, first encountering communist countries such as the Soviet Union and Poland, and later Western Europe.Through different bodies of work he has shown many different interests, including minimalistic dioramas, wax portraits and photographing early photographic negatives. His photography tends to blur the lines between painting, illustration, photography, and architecture. From seascapes to natural history dioramas, there’s something about Sugimoto’s photographs that resonates with viewers. Like Kenna, Sugimoto only photographs in black and white. He prints all of his images himself with a great understanding of silver print, creating images with unbelievably beautiful tones of black, white and gray.