Cyanotypes by Bryan Whitney

Issue 183

My work explores the intersection of art and science using x-ray imaging combined with the cyanotype printing process. Using x-rays—a medium typically reserved for medical or scientific purposes—I reveal the inner architecture of botanical forms, offering a symbolic meditation on transparency, transformation, and unity. We tend to view the world as being composed of discrete objects, including ourselves. Yet energy flows through all things: x-rays, radio waves and much more, hinting at a deeper connectedness. The transparency of form revealed by the x-ray imaging becomes a metaphor for this unseen interconnected reality.

My process involves beaming x-rays through a plant onto very large sheets of x-ray film. There are no cameras or lenses involved and the image that is produced is in a 1:1relationship to the object. This ultra large format film is then hand developed in the darkroom. After drying the film is digitized with a large format scanner. The digital image is then adjusted for contrast, tone, and separated from the background using adigital drawing pen and tablet. The image is then printed as an “internegative” onto transparency material at the size of the final print.

The prints are made by the cyanotype process, which is one of the very earliest photographic processes in use since the 1840’s. Fine watercolor paper is coated by brush with the cyanotype solution which contains iron salts. After the coated paper has been dried in the dark it is placed in contact under glass with the digitally printed internegative and exposed to UV light using an led exposure unit. The UV light activates a photochemical process that turns the exposed cyanotype into shades of Prussian blue. The print is then removed from the negative and developed in a tray of water, which washes away the unexposed cyanotype, leaving the final image.

To complete the work a hand made frame, milled from raw maple wood is cut, mitered, sanded and blue stained to match the print. The frame is considered an integral part of the artwork. I have been making x-rays botanicals for about 25 years. The work has been featured in numerous magazines (including Martha Stewart, Garden Design and Fortune), books, posters etc and has been exhibited in galleries in the US and internationally. The US Postal Service will be producing a set of images of the work as US postage stamps in the next year.

My botanical x-rays are not intended to be taxonomy of plants and flowers. They are votive images that celebrate the beauty of nature seen from within.

Bryan Whitney (he/him) lives and works in New York City, USA.
www.x-rayphotography.com | @bryanwhitney.art