Sister Mary Alice McFarland
X-Ray Flower, 1940s
Hand-colored silver print
14 x 11 inches
With Sister Mary Alice's signature in ink recto.
With Sister Mary Alice's signature in ink recto.
Starting in 1938, Sister Mary Alice McFarland worked for almost 40 years as a supervisor at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. In her off-hours, she used the facility’s X-ray...
Starting in 1938, Sister Mary Alice McFarland worked for almost 40 years as a supervisor at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. In her off-hours, she used the facility’s X-ray machine to create sensitive, detailed floral studies, often hand-colored, which she sold to raise money for needy patients. In 1985, there was an exhibition of her work at the Dayton Art Institute. In a Dayton Daily News article about the show, her unique process was explained:
“To make her prints, Sister Mary Alice used an old-model, open-tube X-ray machine. But that presented problems. Because the low voltage X-ray produces images in a nondescript gray, the pictures lacked clarity. She kept experimenting, ever searching for a black background. In a hurry one day, she made a mistake in preparation and happened on a solution. The resulting process was one she patented. As she would explain later to a visitor, she had to work in a darkroom. She would memorize the position of each flower and then lay it directly on X-ray film in a black box. The X-ray exposure was followed by a light exposure. She went on to make positive X-ray films from the negative - and negative contact prints from the positive X-ray film. The finished negative print…was the result.”
“To make her prints, Sister Mary Alice used an old-model, open-tube X-ray machine. But that presented problems. Because the low voltage X-ray produces images in a nondescript gray, the pictures lacked clarity. She kept experimenting, ever searching for a black background. In a hurry one day, she made a mistake in preparation and happened on a solution. The resulting process was one she patented. As she would explain later to a visitor, she had to work in a darkroom. She would memorize the position of each flower and then lay it directly on X-ray film in a black box. The X-ray exposure was followed by a light exposure. She went on to make positive X-ray films from the negative - and negative contact prints from the positive X-ray film. The finished negative print…was the result.”