LA JOLLA, CA.- Joseph Bellows Gallery announces its exhibition of an important collection of vintage x-ray photographs by Dr. Dain L Tasker. This exhibition opened on January 9th and continue through February 19th, 2016.
Dr. Tasker was the chief radiologist at Wilshire Hospital in Los Angeles when radiology was in its formative phase. In the late 1920s inspired by his knowledge of the x-ray image process, and through his developing involvement with Pictorial photography, Dr. Tasker began to record numerous varieties of flowers with the x-ray process.
His results are among the most striking and unique floral images in the history of photography, delicate in their rendering of subtle tones and descriptive in the tracing of the flowers fragile structure; fulfilling with out sentimentality, Taskers statement, Flowers are the expression of the love life of plants.
Taskers floral x-ray photographs, created in the 1930s are timeless representations of their subject drawn by a distinct process that marries science and art, situating themselves as forerunners within certain experimental modes of contemporary photographic practice. Dr. Taskers modest, yet fully realized radiographs of flowers include a range of species and a wealth of structural beauty that is both inherent to their subject and an effect of the artist's arrangement within the rectangular field that holds their form.
A limited edition monograph of Taskers work, Dr. Dain L. Tasker was published in 2000 by Stinehour Press. Taskers radiographs are in numerous public collections, including: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Center for Creative Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
To request further information or high-resolution images, please contact Joseph Bellows Gallery at info@josephbellows.com. Established in 1998, Joseph Bellows Gallery features rotating exhibitions of both historic and contemporary photography, with a special interest in American work from the 20th Century.