Creating beautiful pieces of art sometimes comes with a risk—working with x-rays is dangerous. Safety is paramount, so all the radiation is contained in a bespoke concrete structure, "The Black Box." This is where the vast majority of the x-ray work is created.

Inside The Black Box are several different x-ray machines and a film processor. An x-ray machine consists of a head unit that emits x-rays and an electronic control that drives the head unit. The head unit is inside the area built to contain radiation; the controls are on the outside.





Items to be x-rayed are placed on a lead floor or wall. Film is placed under or behind the subject. The x-rays that emanate from the head units pass through the item and make an image on the film. That image is exactly the same size as the objects. If an object is too large to fit on one film, several sheets of film are used.

Once the setup is complete, a heavy lead-lined door is pulled shut to contain the radiation. An appropriate exposure time for the item is then entered into the control panel (more x-rays are needed to image a heavy object made of steel than a light object made of plastic).

Now the x-ray exposure is complete, the film is collected from the x-ray room. This film is processed and then scanned on a high-resolution scanner to obtain optimal detail and sharpness. The digital file created by the scanner is then carefully cleaned and retouched. Sometimes color is added, sometimes not. The result is an x-ray of unparalleled detail and beauty.

I had x-rayed parts of cars many times over the course of my career, but had never satisfactorily x-rayed a complete vehicle. I wanted a car that was genuinely cherished by its owners, but had a wider cultural significance and was considered an automotive classic. I have been a Mini owner, and the cars stay in your heart long after you have moved on to pastures new. Furthermore, my engineering images work best when the subjects possess a certain simplicity. The Mini was simple in design and engineering terms, but it was an undisputed design classic. It had reached its half century in spectacularly successful fashion and I wanted to celebrate that occasion.

We painstakingly took the car apart at my studio, piece by piece, and then exposed these elements to hundreds of hours of x-rays. The car we x-rayed had seen better days but the components were good and they looked fantastic when scanned and digitally retouched. That is how we rebuilt the Mini―in the computer. This enabled me to get the best exposures of the many materials in the car. It took us months but the results are spectacular.

Shooting the side of the car was difficult and, the engine block, as a mass of metal, was particularly resistant to being probed by the x-ray machines. However, I persisted and experimented and eventually got the results I wanted. Good old Haynes’ manuals came in useful in the deconstruction and reassembly stages.

From Nick Veasey's artist statement: "We live in a world obsessed with image. What we look like, what our clothes look like, houses, cars… I like to counter this obsession with superficial appearance by using x-rays to strip back the layers and show what it is like under the surface. Often the integral beauty adds intrigue to the familiar. We all make assumptions based on the external visual aspects of what surrounds us and we are attracted to people and forms that are aesthetically pleasing. I like to challenge this automatic way that we react to just physical appearance by highlighting the, often surprising, inner beauty."