Lot 80: Dr. Dain L. Tasker , 1872-1964 'x-ray of a lily'

mounted, signed, titled, and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, matted, 1930 ( Tasker , cover and unpaginated; Flora Photographica , pl. 180; Pictorialism in California , pl. 81; Modernist Photographs , pl. 74)

measurements note 11½ by 9½ in. (29.2 by 24.1 cm.)

Collection of Hal Mohr and Evelyn VenableAcquired by the present owner from the Estate of Evelyn Venable, 1994

Dr. Dain Tasker worked as chief radiologist at Wilshire Hospital in Los Angeles. An active amateur photographer, Tasker first began making x-ray images of flowers in 1930. By placing a flower directly onto a sheet of film, and then exposing it to x-rays, Tasker produced an image which he then used as a negative from which to make finished prints. Through practice, Tasker perfected this technique to produce graceful images that rendered his subjects in subtly-shifting gray tones. Reluctant to promote his own work, he was encouraged by photographer Will Connell to exhibit in the 1931 and '32 salons of the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. That group had named the calla lily image offered here one of the hundred best photographs of 1930. Tasker exhibited his x-ray flower photographs at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco in 1939, and in that year published an article about his own work in the U.S. Camera Annual.