Ultraviolet Light

Cara Phillips has created a fascinating contemplative-feeling portrait portfolio inspired by ultraviolet photography used in the medical profession to visualize the ‘state of the skin’. The project reveals “every tiny little imperfection across a person’s face. To produce the black and white series, the artist set up on the streets of New York with a sign that said ‘Free Portraits’. Any willing participants agreed to sit down right there [close their eyes] and have their photo taken underneath a UV light.” – fstoppers

The ultraviolet photo was taken while the sun was eclipsed by Venus in 2013. Telescopes in NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) are able to reveal in stunning detail the sun’s extreme ultraviolet activity that takes place unseen by the human eye.  As described by NASA the eclipsed sun “was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region toward the right corresponding to a coronal hole. . . . The next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117.”