Röntgenfoto van de met TBC geïnfecteerde ruggenwervel van Isabel Wachenheimer, gedateerd op 2 april 1946 Possibly 1946

This X-ray of Isabel Wachenheimer’s spine, dated April 2nd, 1946, was created by an anonymous artist. It's a strange thing, seeing an image made by radiation, light burning its trace onto a plate. What do we call the palette? Shades of grey? There’s a cloudy, almost painterly quality to the image, a sort of ghostly softness, which is at odds with the starkness of the subject matter. The spine itself has a brittle look, but it's wrapped in this hazy fog, a sea of greys that soften the hard edges. You can see how the light pooled and gathered, creating depth and texture. I keep thinking about the arrow pointing to the infected vertebra, a small, almost comic gesture, that has a huge weight of information and meaning in the context of the whole image. I wonder if Agnes Martin ever saw X-rays. There’s something about the delicacy and austerity that they share. Both open a space of contemplation on the body and the self.