X_RAY is a portrait series made with a flatbed scanner used as an image-making device. Faces and bodies are placed directly against the glass and recorded progressively, line by line. Movement, pressure and small shifts during the scan stretch and fragment the subject. The resulting images are then transformed digitally through colour, layering and distortion. Rather than correcting the traces produced by the machine, I use them as part of the portrait, allowing each image to move between recognition and abstraction.

By Victor Rouvre