- Lorde’s Virgin album cover (2025)
- Heji Shin’s X-ray Dog and Heji VII (2018)
- Meret Oppenheim’s X-ray of M.O.’s Skull (1964)
- Man Ray’s ‘Rayographs’, specifically; ‘The Kiss’ (1922)
These works share semi-transparency. They are something new, simultaneously pre-existing things uncovered through processing. In Man Ray’s case, the process was layering objects on photographic paper exposed to light in different sequences. The other three works are X-ray images. They show what exists but can’t be seen with the naked eye. Swimming in our memory pools uncovers hidden depths, sometimes creating a new thing while exploring. It is of direct relevance to Unified Memory to process these works.
I sought to link four meaning-dense artworks, the X-ray as a medium in artistic expression and image-making with the semiotics of X-ray images. This is not a detailed comparison.
When X-rays were enigmatic and novel, they were inextricably linked with images of death, magic and surveillance. In the 19th century, X-rays inspired artists across the mediums of architecture, painting, and photography to look differently. X-rays made something like a solid human body feel transparent because we could see images of what was beneath the skin without removing it. In ‘Turbid Matter: Aesthetics of the X-ray’, Chelsea Lehmann argues that X-rays gave artists perceptual awareness of an immaterial reality, attuning them to the invisible and intangible.
X-rays allow us to look inside a body and see bones, like how you can see wine inside a glass. People looked at glass differently, because it showed up as far less insubstantial on an X-ray than it did in real life. Glass holds intrinsic tension: it is breakable yet durable and resilient, visible yet not quite. Beatriz Colomina in ‘X-Screens: Röntgen Architecture’ thinks of X-rays to images as invisible user flows to screens: postulating that making the private publicly visible by baring our bones created a new, stark and open architecture. This manifests as glass skyscrapers, giant picture windows, and clean modern, sparse homes.
In ‘Naked to the Bone’ (p.127) Bettyann Keyles cites Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Portrait of Chess Players’ (1911) as ‘the most emblematic’ X-ray inspired piece because the viewer is given insight into the players heads, rather than a picture of people playing a board game.
Interestingly, The Semiotics of X discusses the physicality of X evoking meaning based on body memory. X stands for a cross between vulnerability and euphoria through the cipher’s spread eagled shape, intersection or collaboration, the unknown, a kiss (xxoxo), obscenity (X-rated), power, extremes. X-rays were named for the lack of knowledge held about them at the time.
X-rays were initially read as invasive. With HIPAA guidelines, most of us know looking at X-ray images of other people’s bodies feels wrong. X-rays aren’t erotic or nude, but they are not decent. They feel morbid because they’re high contrast, darker in tone, usually depicting skeletons. X-rays are not risk free, they expose the subject to radiation which over time, is dangerous to human health. An individual X-ray carries justifiable risk, little enough to allow for proactive imaging in countries where healthcare is less centrally regulated. While not enough of a novelty to warrant $1 X-ray machines as fairground amusement, they deviate enough from the mundane to make them exciting when used non-medically – like in album covers and self-portraits.
Lorde launched the Virgin album cover on her website with the note ‘100% written in blood’. The cover is an image of a pelvic X-ray, taken clothed and cropped square, taken by Heji Shin. Heji Shin is a Korean artist who has a series of ‘X-ray’ self-portraits of herself with two specially selected dogs; their presence justified by her desire to include ‘little monsters’ in the image.
Lorde’s album cover is very blue; almost cerulean-teal but muddier. The value range includes darker teal to white, clustered mostly around the midtones. White peeks through a lot. There is a radial gradient of white to blue at the bottom of the image, evoking a tunnel and void, heavenliness and air. It is lower contrast and bluer than a typical X-ray, perhaps in a nod to ‘the blue light at Baby’s All Right’ from her song lyrics? Perhaps a nod to Gen X Soft Club and a persistent, pervasive nostalgia we all seem to carry around. It’s not a particularly harsh image, far less stark than the other three works mentioned in this piece. It’s the only one in color, being so new it is also the youngest. Lorde translates this color as transparent, not blue.
Focal points in the image include the belt buckle, a strong diagonal line evoking masculinity, rigidity, being guarded or inaccessible. Belts hold pants up, so we know the subject has clothes on. The circular button, buckle and zip add a layer of separation despite the fact we are seeing bones. The zip itself is a strong visual because its darker than the bones and background. Mostly closed, it is slightly open at the top. This renders the subject very partially accessible, the imperfect closure hinting at the work-in-progress lyrical themes of the album.
The zip and buckle remind us the subject has the agency to hold something back, even while we experience the perfect illusion of knowing their innermost thoughts, their substance. Surveillance is alluded to in three ways. Firstly, the large jeans button is (third) eye-like, as are the smaller, decorative buttons. The X-ray itself is medical surveillance. Fame necessitates a level of surveillance, and we are looking, in great detail. The pelvic bones could be argued to form an eye mask-like shape.
Bone is obviously visible, the pelvic structure forming a halo encircling an IUD, the zip and buckle. Bone is a brutalist and ancient material, impersonal, agnostic. When used like this, it’s exciting because we’re seeing not much, yet more than we should. The spine asserts itself silently, behind the pelvic halo.
If we were radiologists, we could pinpoint fecal matter on this image. The IUD, pelvic bones, an air of ‘medical examination’ bring the private into public in a grotesque fashion, something less glamorous, more raw. Pelvic bones shout at what the subject of most songs is: the title Virgin playing with purity but also what most of the songs are about.
Referencing the paratext from her newsletter, Lorde states she was “trying to see [herself], all the way through” which is ironic for so anonymous an image, gendered subtly through the IUD and bone structure. Where does this album cover sit on a spectrum with Charli XCX’s brat? You could place it at the extreme opposite end, or right next to brat: we’re literally seeing inside her body, but it also shows us very little, it’s almost interchangeable and we only know it’s Lorde’s X-ray because she told us so. Neither album covers have conventional popstar-women-images on them, which is at least as refreshing as the shade of blue used.
Meret Oppenheim’s self-portrait X-ray is conventionally black and white, in fact higher contrast because a contact print was made from the original negative: inverting the colors. The skull wears jewellery, which you should not in a medical context. This genders the portrait like Lorde’s IUD. The image is a simple side view of a skull wearing earrings, one hand splayed wearing rings, partial neck and shoulder.
Traces of the face remain hazy and ghostly which personalise an anonymous profile. The image feels radical for 1964 less so due to the medium, but because of the absence of a face in a woman’s self-portrait, particularly when art was more male-dominated than it is today. Temporal context makes Oppenheim's action rebellious, even as she bares less than Lorde does.
Oppenheim's is not a grinning skull and it’s hazier than a medical X-ray. It’s neutrality of expression, inclusion of the hand make it clear it’s trying to say something: probably about the totality of being because we can see in and out. Knowing Oppenheim rarely worked from reality, its interesting an image so important to her is more than photographically realistic. She was fascinated with ‘comprehensive reality’, very literally revealing what was inside her head. Because this image is older, better known, and more written about than Lorde’s cover has been, its tempting to say it holds more artistic weight. I don’t believe that to be true.
It’s intriguing that Heji Shin’s X-ray of Lorde centered her pelvis while Oppenheim makes her skull and hand share the stage, Heji Shin’s self-portrait insists upon an animal sharing the space, and Man Ray’s ‘rayograph’ includes his lover. What they chose to show tells us what was central to their thoughts at the time the image was made.
The X-ray medium reads self-sacrificial because it ultimately involves exposing oneself to (mild) risk. This cost lends authority to the story being told, it cost something to say so we should listen harder. X-rays take time and are less accessible than iPhone selfies. It takes time to have an X-ray done, and they can show the effects of time passing on a body. If the subject was an object like a painting, they can reveal layers of the process not visible to our eyes. Photos of X-rays for medical use evoke pathos because we feel bad when people are sick.
Before selfies were done to death, it was intriguing and a little illicit to see celebrities take self-portraits with MacBooks, handheld cameras or phones. To see them outside a curated photoshoot felt extreme and intimate; but is now oversaturated. Lorde’s X-ray in a time where neuroticism is increasing but extraversion is decreasing reads closer to editorialised sad-posting for attention on Instagram instead of radical transparency. Oppenheim’s self-portrait reads less self-concerned, though she clearly took the time to curate her appearance by adorning it with jewellery.
These days, everything is naked but nothing is sensual or intimate. Women having palatable bodies is the barest minimum, a barrier to entry for fame replaced only through the absurd, grotesque, conceptual or cruelty-tinged novelty. The volume is either turned all the way up or muted when we watch TikToks on a bus: the Age of Extrem(iti)es. We are obsessed with looking inside our bodies and biohacking, taking proactive blood tests, Bryan Johnson’s blueprint. Incidentally, both for Lorde and Johnson, blue is analogous to clarity, transparency, not-there-ness. Oppenheim’s X-rays don’t feel as exciting as Lorde’s, maybe it’s the color or the popstar, they feel a lot less ephemeral. Heji Shin’s don’t make me feel much at all – maybe they are too degendered?
Lorde’s lyrics talk about body fluids, and the note says Virgin was written in blood, but it feels so impersonal and untethered on the cover that the blood note feels like bardcore cosplay. Heji Shin’s self-portraits feel ‘rawer’ perhaps because her attention is locked in a moment with the dog, but she is wearing a t-shirt which hides well, something. They demand an answer to ‘why the dog?’. Ultimately, there is intentionality in pitching oneself as the kind of person who would bare it all, but only if they could include ‘little monsters’ – maybe to show you they think of themselves as another kind of animal, they are wild and free; or afraid of being alone. Well, why not a cat? What does the dog say about her exposed self?
Man Ray’s ‘The Kiss’ tells you he’s romantic, he can find someone to kiss him in an art image, he took the time to layer the image in a way that looks good. He directly references Klimt when Klimt was still white-hot: he wants you to read into the image. All works contain intentionality and lack spontaneity, they directly ask for your opinion and as such inspire more inquiry for me than a passionate Pollock dripping paint on canvas.
The appearance of a celebrity X-ray interrogates fame-surveillance, seeing the X-ray as a screen hammers in the screen as a site of intense speculation. The screen is probably where we all first saw Lorde’s album cover, which is not as likely to be the case for the other three works in their first public viewing. The X-ray image continues to be grounded, permanent. It doesn’t change despite what we think the cryptic message is. ‘It looks cool’ does heavy lifting in answering to the charm of these images. The aesthetics of medical imagery borrow gravitas from white coat settings, in the way that artificial intelligence creates the illusion of knowledge and conversation while being not much more than predictive text.
Enigma is crucial to tease and lasting fascination: maybe the highest value these transparent not-images offer is that they do not show it all. It’s never really all there.