While society may push us to focus on external appearance, Nick Veasey has been busy creating images of everyday objects that reveal what lies beneath their glossy surfaces, thereby challenging our obsession with the image and superficiality, where we are automatically attracted to people and forms that are esthetically pleasing. He hopes to let the intrinsic beauty of things shine through using X-ray technology and convince us that it’s what’s inside that counts.
Having a gift for looking at the world differently, he likes the honesty of X-rays, which unmask an object’s many layers and makeup. They show things for what they are, what they are made of, how they work, why they have that shape. Using lethal radiation, he exposes the reality of things; his images penetrate beneath the surface and take us on a journey into the unknown and the invisible where the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.
Fashion X-Rayed, Veasey’s first exhibition in 2011 in France at Espace La Vallée, the contemporary art gallery of La Vallée Village outlet shopping, showcased over 15 fashion-related X-ray images, including a wedding gown, sequined handbag and biker jacket. Paradoxically, his work has been embraced by the fashion industry, where perhaps it provides welcome respite to a universe preoccupied with the exterior.
He says, “I thought it would be good to interpret fashion, but instead of working with contemporary brands, I used non-descript, classical pieces of fashion. When you look inside a fashion magazine, you see beautiful, skinny girls wearing expensive, glamorous clothes in fantastic locations with great hair and makeup. I wanted to strip away those accoutrements and consider the garment in its own right, and show how much love, care and attention go into the design and production of the textiles and bringing the textiles together to make the clothes. Showing the clothes in isolation makes you think about how the clothes transform the body. Because an X-ray is looking from the inside out, you strip away all the color and embellishments. What I’m trying to get across to people with my work in general is that beauty is more than skin deep.”
Starting off in experimental, arty photography before transitioning to X-ray imaging, today Veasey’s work is used in advertising campaigns, graces products and packaging, is exhibited in galleries worldwide and collected by institutions like London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. He was nominated for the IPA Lucie International Photographer of the Year 2008 award, and past clients include BMW,
Working out of a former military spying station near London, a lead-lined concrete-walled bunker, the facility is entirely sealed before the X-ray equipment operates to protect the artist and his assistants from radiation. Purchasing machines used in medicine, industry and art restoration, Veasey dons a lead apron and lead underwear and leaves the room when an X-ray is being taken. Shot along the same lines as conventional X-ray images, his artworks demonstrate much more detail, depth and clarity thanks to technology and his in-depth autodidactic knowledge in the field after many years of experimentation.
Depending on what they’re made of, Veasey will adjust the length of time he needs to photograph his subjects. His most technically-complex piece was a
In today’s information age where we are increasingly under surveillance, Veasey delights in appropriating a technology originally designed to let Big Brother rummage through our private lives and assault our freedom, using it instead to create intrigue and beauty. He chooses to shoot objects that we come across daily to show the passion and effort that have gone into making them or the many elements of which they are composed. He notes, “Hopefully, it makes people calm down in this modern, cold, fast-paced, image-bombarded world and appreciate everything – manmade and natural – that surrounds us.” Whether it’s a teddy bear, bicycle, lamp, flower or crab, he gets a kick out of revealing the inner beauty of the quotidian. By showing what’s really inside, his art succeeds in uncovering the true face of the world.
