X-Ray Vision

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a German physicist, discovered X-rays on this day in 1895.

Kathy Vargas uses X-ray type images in this chilling artwork, Missing #3. Vargas draws upon pre-Columbian myths, Mexican Catholicism, Latin American magical realism, and vivid childhood experiences in San Antonio to express the dreams, memories, and nostalgia depicted in her manipulated photographs.

Missing #3 consists of hand-colored gelatin silver prints that she created through multiple-exposure photography. Together they create a haunting, poetic memento mori (reminder of the cycle of life, death, and resurrection). In this X-ray-like image, a dark and lifeless bird is tucked into a band of clothing, feathers are strewn about, and broken twigs form an abstract pattern. The inspiration for the artwork came from a dream in which Vargas was lying in a coffin. As mourners paid their final respects, she was transformed into a bird. This is symbolized in the central panels, in which the bird and skeleton merge.

This artwork is part of our traveling exhibition Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The show is on view at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago through November 11, 2001.

Source: Jonathan Yorba. Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001).

Pictured: Kathy Vargas, born 1950, Missing #3, 1992, hand-colored silver prints on paper (6), 24 x 20 in. each, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.