TASKER DAIN L (1872 1964) Eucalyptus An X Ray

Sale 2135 - Lot 66

Price Realized: $ 14,400

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000

TASKER, DAIN L. (1872-1964)
"Eucalyptus, An X-Ray." Bromide contact print, 9 1/4x7 1/2 inches (23.5x19.1 cm.), with Tasker's signature, title, and date, in pencil, on the two-toned mount recto, and his title and notations, in pencil, address label, and "Festival of Arts" exhibition label, on mount verso. 1932

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Additional Details

From a private collection; by agent, to the present owner in 1998.

Throughout the 1930s Dr. Dain L. Tasker, a radiologist, used fine-focus X-ray tubes to produce floral studies on X-ray film. Published in "U. S. Camera" and "Popular Photography" magazines, and tutored by the photographer Will Connell, Tasker's work was hailed for its beauty. However, after his death, his oeuvre fell into obscurity and has only recently been rediscovered and recognized as the work of a masterful artist.

"Flowers are the expression of the love life of plants," Tasker once wrote. Sublime in their minimalist sensibility, Tasker's images of flowers are ethereal, ghost-like representations of this frequently photographed subject. The inherent transparency of Tasker's chosen medium also reveals the strength of the plant's structure, lending the image a sort of eroticism and dynamic modernism.