In a series called "History's Shadow," photographer David Maisel takes pictures of the x-rays used by art conservators. The art objects are all in the collections of the Getty Museum and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
"The x-ray," Maisel writes, "has historically been used for the structural examination of art and artifacts much as physicians examine bones and internal organs; it reveals losses, replacements, methods of construction, and internal trauma that may not be visible to the naked eye." He aims to do something different with these photographs; The goal, he explains, is to express the "shape-shifting nature of time itself, and the continuous presence of the past contained within us."
