Students, physicians say X-ray exhibit drives home human toll of terrorism
Stanford Report, September 12, 2007
BY LOUIS BERGERON

Diane Covert wants to change the way people view terrorist attacks. "I don't want to traumatize anybody, I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want them to understand," the artist explained as she showed a visitor through her exhibit one day last week.

"Inside Terrorism: The X-ray Project," on display in the lobby of Fairchild Auditorium through Sept. 14, features X-ray and CT scans of victims of terrorist attacks. In one sense, all the images are just clinical renderings of damaged humans, something viewed daily by physicians around the world.

But the images also show unusual causes of the damage. Nails. Hex nuts. Screws. Even a wristwatch. All still imbedded in the human bodies; in legs, arms, torsos and heads.

X-rays are nothing new for Gordon Shattock, a radiology technician at Stanford Hospital. "But these are far and above what we would probably see," Shattock said. "And Stanford is a trauma center. It brings home the reality of what's happening."

Dean Philip Pizzo, MD, said that "to see bones and tissues torn apart by nuts, bolts, nails and bombs is truly shattering to any professional."

One of the factors that drove Covert to create the exhibit was a desire to switch the focus away from the terrorists—who she feels get too much media attention—to the victims of their attacks, including survivors. And although all the images are from two hospitals in Jerusalem, the victims span a broad range of ethnicities and religions.

"We hear about all the people who die and all the body counts, but to actually see the burden that the living are left with … certainly makes you think about the bigger picture," said Donald Olson, MD, associate professor of neurology, as he viewed the exhibit.

Though graphic, the simple black and white images are not gory. "The things that we associate with being so human—like skin, eyes and hair—are all stripped away," said Elizabeth Zambricki, one of several third-year medical students who helped bring the exhibit to campus.

"It's good because you can actually sit there and ponder it, while I think a lot of images that you see in the media, they're just so gruesome that it's almost hard to look at and really take in," she said.

The very spareness of Covert's images heightens their impact. The sharp edges of a hex nut against the smooth curves outlining a femur, or a pointed nail aligned parallel to a victim's spinal cord.

One image shows a chunk of metal where it came to rest inside a victim's brain, against the inside wall of the skull, on the left side of the forehead. A black trail stretches out behind it back through the brain to the point of entry near the right ear. The trail appears darker than the surrounding tissue because the freshly created void space is filled with air, rather than gray matter.

Rebecca Rakow-Penner was especially struck when she heard Covert describing to a reporter an image of a student with a wristwatch lodged in her neck. "I thought of myself as a student and all my friends around me and that could have been any of us sitting on that bus and being that unfortunate person," she said. "It was shocking, disturbing and, unfortunately, our reality."

Rakow-Penner, pursuing an MD and PhD, and fellow third-year medical student Matthew Goldstein were among the students who organized the show.

Goldstein said that although he was just entering his third year, he was already attuned to viewing X-rays from a medical perspective, simply as tools for diagnosis, but the images cut through that professional detachment. "Seeing all the nuts and bolts, and a wristwatch, that's incredibly striking," he said.

Richard Greene, MD, a pediatrician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, agreed. "Look at this collection of stuff that's in people's bodies," he said, gesturing at a small display case filled with the sort of nails, nuts and screws used in the bombs. "That's crazy. To think that people can actually do this to one another."

For Jo Wallace, an art therapist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the exhibit drove home more than the nature of the physical damage. "I'm a child therapist, so I work with the emotional side of things," she said. "I wish we had an X-ray for the emotional trauma that these individuals have experienced as well."

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Aug. 28 , 2007

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Media advisory: X-ray exhibit at Stanford shows human impact of terrorism
By Mitzi Baker

STANFORD, Calif. — In a time when daily news reports of terrorist bombings can leave people numb to the trauma of the injured, photographer Diane Covert has put a spotlight on the civilian victims of terrorism. She has assembled a collection of X-rays and CT scans of people who were out eating pizza, riding a bus home from work or dancing at a wedding when their lives were forever changed by a terrorist’s bomb.

Covert’s exhibit, “Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project” opens at the Stanford University School of Medicine on Sept. 4, its first West Coast stop on a national tour that has included shows in Boston and Baltimore. It runs through Sept. 14 in the lobby of Fairchild Auditorium on the Stanford campus.

The images pack a powerful message, not through blood and gore, but by their simplicity. One shows the watch worn by a suicide bomber that ended up embedded in the neck of a victim. Another shows hex nuts that ended up in someone’s pelvis. These are the stories of real people who have survived terrorist attacks.

Covert emphasized that, although she obtained these images from the two largest hospitals in Jerusalem, her exhibit transcends nationality, religion and gender.

“They represent a broad cross-section of humanity,” she said on the project’s Web site. Terrorism’s victims are commuters on the London underground and the trains of Madrid; they are celebrants at a wedding in Amman, Jordan and a bat mitzvah in Hadera, Israel; and they are workers in the World Trade Center in New York City. “The victims of terrorism, worldwide, are ordinary people going about their lives,” she said.

More information about the project is available at http://www.x-rayproject.org/.
In addition, the medical school has scheduled several events related to the exhibit. All events are free and open to the public. They include:

What: “Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project” exhibit.
When: Sept. 4-14. Open Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Where: The lobby of Fairchild Auditorium, Stanford School of Medicine, 291 Campus Drive

What: Reception and discussion with artist Diane Covert
When: Sept. 4, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Where: Fairchild Auditorium

What: Pediatric grand rounds, “Young victims of violence: The aftermath of trauma on the psychological well-being of children.” Presented by Victor Carrion, MD, associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry and child development
When: Sept. 7, 8 a.m.
Where: Fairchild Auditorium

What: “Remembering worldwide terrorist victims” memorial
When: Sept. 11, noon
Where: Fairchild Auditorium

For directions and locations of parking, please consult the map at the following link: http://med.stanford.edu/maps/sumc.html. Limited metered parking is available at the parking lot by Fairchild Auditorium, entrance at Campus Drive West and Via Ortega.

*NOTE: Different Location for Sept. 7, 2007 only: Fairchild Auditorium *

Art exhibit focuses on terrorism
Stanford showcases X-rays of Israeli bombing victims
By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

Among a batch of X-rays that arrived at the Stanford University School of Medicine this week were images of a severely broken leg studded with hex nuts, a chest pierced with a nail and pieces of a bomber's wristwatch embedded in a young girl's neck.

The collection of back-lit images printed on Duratrans medical film was propped inside a cluster of display cases for local residents and students to view over the next two weeks. They're part of the X-Ray Project, a collection of X-rays and CT scans of terrorism victims obtained from the two largest hospitals in Jerusalem.

Assembled by Boston artist Diane Covert, the exhibit made its first West Coast stop at the Stanford University School of Medicine, after a massive community effort to bring it there.

"This allows us to express our concerns about the terrorism in Israel, but it's not just about Israel, it's a global issue," said Julie Bernstein, program associate at the Jewish Community Relations Council, which coordinated the effort to bring the exhibit to the Bay Area.

"These images are vastly different from the kinds of images you would see at a Stanford hospital," said third-year Stanford medical student Elizabeth Zambricki, who helped persuade the medical school's radiology department to host and sponsor the exhibit.

Covert said that although the radiographs are meant to unsettle, they are still traditional art.

"In my mind this is a portrait," Covert said, pointing to an image of a nail stuck inside a shoulder.

"The only difference is that the wavelength of light allows us to go through the soft tissue," she said.

Covert, who was trained as a social worker but is a practicing documentary photographer, said what prompted her to organize the collection was discomfort over the amount of media attention usually showered on terrorists after their attacks.

"There's too little empathy for the victims, too little concern about what people go through. I wanted to change the emphasis," she said.

But obtaining the radiographs from Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Hadassah Ein Kerem, the two major hospitals that take care of 99 percent of Jerusalem's sick population, was "very challenging," Covert said.

"I pestered a lot of people until we found a doctor that was willing," she said.

The two hospitals eventually gave Covert about 150 images, sending some full-body scans through mail carriers and smaller images on discs. It took her around 18 months, working with a radiology expert, to comb through the images, she said.

Covert does not know the names of her victims, but she assumes they survived their attacks, if only for a few hours.

"Doctors don't order X-rays of people that are dead," she noted.

But even for survivors, recovery can be difficult both physically and mentally, said Victor Carrion, a Stanford professor of child psychiatry who will deliver a lecture Friday in conjunction with the exhibit.

"It used to be thought that children were more resilient to post-traumatic stress disorder, but it's the total opposite. While the brain is developing, there's a lot of vulnerability," Carrion said.

The medical school will also host a memorial for "worldwide terrorist victims" next to the exhibit Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.


E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.

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X-rays turn art into illustration of terror
Traveling exhibit uses victims' medical images to draw attention to terrorism's toll.
By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Nov. 5, 2007.

A wristwatch lies implanted in a jugular vein, hex nuts pepper a hip and a solitary nail rests parallel to a patient's spine.

These are just a few of a number of images created from terrorist victims' x-rays that are part of the touring art exhibit "Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project," accessible online (www.x-rayproject.org).

Diane Covert, the photographer behind the project, said although the images were gathered from doctors in Israel, her goal was to create a body of work that focused on the impact of terror on individuals, regardless of their nationality, race or ethnicity. She wanted to build awareness of terror victims -- not the perpetrators, who she believes get too much attention.

The x-ray images were created as diagnostic tools, yet Covert sees them as portraits: "Doctors are inadvertently documenting this age of terror. ... Each image shows the worst that people can do and the very best in a single image."

Observers' responses have been overwhelmingly positive, she said.

"Physicians have really liked it," Covert said, recalling that one radiologist with extensive trauma experience told her some of the injuries were the worst he had ever seen.

Rebecca Rakow-Penner, a third-year medical student at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, helped bring the exhibit to campus. Rakow-Penner described the images as "shocking and disturbing." She said they also made her realize that though doctors are busy, it is important to take time out and focus on current events.