Nick Veasey's X-Ray Art for Spooky Season

October has a way of making us look at the world differently. The veil between worlds grows thin, shadows lengthen, and we find ourselves drawn to the mysterious, the hidden, the things that lurk beneath the surface. This is the perfect moment to explore the haunting beauty of Nick Veasey's X-ray photography, a body of work that strips away the superficial to reveal what's really underneath.

While most of us associate X-rays with doctors' offices and airport security, British artist Nick Veasey transforms this medical technology into something altogether more mesmerizing and, yes, delightfully spooky. His work feels tailor-made for this season of skulls and skeletons, of revealing what normally remains hidden, of celebrating the beautiful strangeness that exists just beneath the surface of everyday life.

Veasey arrived at his medium almost by accident. When asked to X-ray a can of cola for a television show years ago, he became captivated by what the radiation revealed. He X-rayed the shoes he was wearing that day and showed the result to an art director. The response galvanized him. Here was a way to show people the world they thought they knew from a completely different perspective.

Working in a studio with walls lined with 35 centimeters of lead, Veasey uses industrial radiographic equipment far more powerful than anything you'd encounter in a hospital. His process is both dangerous and demanding. He bombards objects with radiation for ten minutes or more to achieve the crisp, ethereal images that have earned him international acclaim. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London added his work to the British National Collection of Photography. Science institutions and art galleries worldwide have acquired his pieces, recognizing them as something that transcends simple photography.

Perfect for October and beyond, these works transform any space into something a little more intriguing, a little more magical.

There's something inherently gothic about Veasey's aesthetic. His Devil Horns piece, currently available at Sorrel Sky Gallery, captures that playful darkness that makes Halloween so appealing. But it's not just the obviously spooky subjects that make his work perfect for October. Every X-ray image carries with it that same quality of revelation, of seeing past the mask to what lies underneath. In a season that celebrates skeletons and the temporary nature of flesh, Veasey's work reminds us that inside, we are all the same, all bone and breath and beautiful machinery.

His floral X-rays, pieces like Iris Silverado, Cactus Dahlia, and Parrot Tulip, reveal the intricate skeletons of blooms. These aren't the cheerful garden flowers of spring. They're ghostly, elegant, almost spectral in their translucent beauty. The delicate structures that support each petal, normally hidden from view, become the main event. You see stems and stamens rendered in shades of gray and white against inky backgrounds, like botanical specimens preserved for eternity.

The Chrysanthemum and Chrysanthemum Bloom pieces showcase flowers traditionally associated with death in many cultures, their X-rayed forms taking on an almost otherworldly quality. Here in the galleries, we watch visitors stop in their tracks when they encounter these works. There's something unsettling and utterly captivating about seeing the familiar made strange, about recognizing a flower you've seen a thousand times and simultaneously not recognizing it at all.

Veasey extends his X-ray vision to everyday objects, revealing their hidden complexity. His vintage camera series, including the Moy Film Camera, Newman G Camera, and Mitchell Film Camera, transforms these tools of image-making into subjects themselves. The cameras that once captured the surface of things now have their own surfaces stripped away, their gears and mechanisms laid bare like the inner workings of a Victorian automaton.

His musical instruments —the Piano accordion, Brass French Horn, Brass Saxophone, and Brass Cornet —become studies in both form and function. The radiation reveals every key, every valve, every twist of tubing that makes music possible. These pieces speak to something fundamentally human, our impulse to build beauty out of metal and air, while simultaneously reminding us of the cold mechanics underneath every song.

Then there's Shaken Not Stirred, a piece that radiographs the iconography of James Bond's signature martini glass, complete with its olive. Even our most sophisticated pleasures, Veasey suggests, are just arrangements of matter and space when you look closely enough.

What makes Veasey's work so compelling, especially during this season of costumes and disguises, is its absolute honesty. He strips away every pretense, every decorative surface, to show us the truth of things. His Newspaper Man reveals a skeleton reading the daily news, a memento mori for the modern age. We're all consuming information, staying current, keeping up with the world, but underneath our routines and rituals, we remain what we've always been.

The piece resonates differently in October, when we're more willing to acknowledge mortality, to play with images of death without fear. Veasey's skeletons aren't frightening. They're elegant, contemplative, sometimes even humorous. They exist in the space between science and art, between the clinical and the beautiful.

His floral works operate on a similar principle. Flowers are nature's most obvious seduction, evolved to attract and please. But X-ray them and you discover architectural beauty, structural integrity, the scaffolding that makes all that softness possible. It's a revelation perfectly suited to autumn, when gardens fade and we're left with stems and seed heads, when nature herself starts showing us her bones.

Veasey's pieces occupy a unique space in contemporary art. They're technically photographs, but they capture something invisible to the human eye. They're scientific documents that function as meditation on mortality, beauty, and truth. Each work is a limited edition, printed using techniques that preserve the luminous quality of the X-ray imagery.

The pieces we have here in the galleries range from his floral studies to his cultural icons, from intimate hand gestures (Peace with Daisies, Hang Loose with Bands) to grand technical achievements. What unites them is Veasey's unwavering commitment to revelation, to showing us what's really there when you strip away the surface.

Veasey often returns to this phrase: inside we are all the same. It's his artistic mantra, the philosophy that drives his work. In our image-obsessed culture, where surfaces matter so much and appearances can feel like everything, Veasey's X-rays offer a kind of antidote. They remind us that beneath skin and style, beneath marketing and presentation, there's a more fundamental truth.

This message feels especially relevant in October, when we deliberately put on masks and costumes, exploring themes of identity and transformation. Veasey's work exists as a counterpoint to Halloween's disguises. No matter what you wear on the outside, no matter what costume you choose, underneath, you're still beautifully, essentially, perfectly yourself.

His Antlers Gold piece, with its branching structures revealed in luminous detail, captures this paradox. The antlers are both crown and skeleton, both decoration and bone. They're a symbol of strength and vitality that Veasey renders in a way that emphasizes their mortality, their temporary nature. Everything magnificent is also fleeting. Everything solid eventually becomes transparent.

First-time viewers of Veasey's work often have a physical reaction. They lean in close, trying to understand how the images were made. They step back to take in the full composition. They return for second and third looks, discovering new details each time. This is art that rewards attention, that reveals itself slowly, like secrets whispered in the dark.

Here in our galleries, we've watched collectors drawn to different aspects of his work. Some love the technical achievement, the mastery of a dangerous and difficult medium. Others respond to the metaphorical weight, the way these images comment on truth and transparency. Still others simply find them beautiful in a way they can't quite articulate, haunting in the best possible sense.

The pieces work in contemporary settings, their stark contrasts and bold compositions holding their own against any wall. But they also possess a timeless quality. These could be Victorian spirit photographs, mid-century modernist studies, or cutting-edge contemporary work. They exist outside of trend, anchored by Veasey's singular vision and unwavering technical skill.

This October, we invite you to experience Nick Veasey's X-ray photography in person. Come see how radiation can create lyricism, how scientific equipment can produce grace, how the act of looking through something can help you see it clearly for the first time.

Whether you're drawn to the obvious Halloween appeal of skeleton imagery or the more subtle revelations of his floral studies, Veasey's work offers something rare in contemporary art: a genuinely new way of seeing. He takes the familiar and makes it mysterious. He shows us death and makes it beautiful. He strips away surfaces and discovers poetry underneath.

The pieces are available now at Sorrel Sky Gallery in Durango, Santa Fe, and our New York locations. As the leaves fall and October deepens, there's no better time to explore art that celebrates what lies beneath, that honors the hidden, that finds beauty in bones and transparency and truth.

Because in the end, that's what this season is really about. Not just costumes and candy, but that brief moment when we're willing to look past surfaces, to acknowledge what we usually keep hidden, to celebrate the fact that beneath everything temporary and decorative and superficial, there's something more essential, more honest, more beautiful than we usually allow ourselves to see.