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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/33437/full/33437/shades-of-gray-x-ray-project-examines-nuts-and-bolts-of-terror/ <br /><br /> <b>Shades of gray: X-ray project examines nuts and bolts of terror</b> <br /> Thursday, September 20, 2007 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>For photographer Diane Covert, getting inside the mind of a terrorist proved nearly impossible. Instead, she focused on getting inside the bodies of terrorist victims.<br /><br /> Covert's "Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project" is a disturbing art exhibit consisting of dozens of X-ray films. At first glance, most seem typically blurry and indistinct.<br /><br /> Then, one cannot help noticing the nuts, bolts and nails embedded in the soft tissue of victims.<br /><br /> The images were previously on display at Stanford University Medical Center's Fairchild Auditorium, and will be shown in Stanford's Tressider Hall in late October before moving to San Jose State.<br /><br /> Every image comes from the medical files at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek and Hadassah Hospitals. Each depicts a real-life victim of terror -- suicide bombs, mostly -- their identities and religions unknown. <br /><br /> "They're human beings," says Covert from her Boston home. "Nobody deserves to experience what they experienced. [The X-rays] are not disgusting, in terms of being grisly or bloody, but as you look at them, it slowly dawns on you what you're looking at."<br /><br /> In one image a wristwatch, hurled at horrible velocity, lodges in the neck of a female victim. In another, one can make out the victim's elbows and forearms. But where are the hands?<br /><br /> Though Jewish, Covert wanted to create art that spoke to a universal revulsion over terror, no matter who the victims might be. She cites the examples of Matthew Brady's Civil War photography or Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," as seminal anti-war art that inspired her as she developed the X-ray project.<br /><br /> "Terrorism is the most important issue of our day," says the artist. "[The X-rays] give us a metaphor of looking inside terrorism. I consider them portraits and figure studies."<br /><br /> Covert opened the exhibit in Boston two years ago, and so far she says she's received overwhelmingly positive response. Though Jews quickly comprehended what she was doing with the X-ray project, Covert says non-Jewish audiences seem to have been impacted the most.<br /><br /> "People did not know this was going on," she notes. "They didn't understand what survivors live with, that these bombs are packed with shrapnel. When terrorism is just a word in a news article it didn't mean anything."<br /><br /> <br><br /><br /> <b>"Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project"</b> will be shown from Oct. 28-Nov. 3. at Tressider Hall on the Stanford campus. It will then be on display from Nov. 5-16 in the Martin Luther King Jr. Library at San Jose State University. Information: (415) 957-1551.<br /><br /> </p>

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