Dr. Röntgen X-rayed his wife's hand.

Quite why he had to pin her fingers to the floor

with her brooch, I'm not sure. It seems a bit extreme to me.

That image was the start of the X-ray technology.

And I'm still fundamentally using the same principles today.

I'm interpreting it in a more contemporary manner.

The first shot I ever did

was of a soda can, which was to promote a brand that we all know,

so I'm not going to do them any favors by showing you it.

But the second shot I did was my shoes I was wearing on the day.

And I do really like this shot, because

it shows all the detritus that's sort of embedded

in the sole of the sneakers.

It was just one of those pot-luck things where you

get it right first time.

Moving on to something a bit larger,

this is an X-ray of a bus.

And the bus is full of people.

It's actually the same person. It's just one skeleton.

And back in the '60s,

they used to teach student radiographers

to take X-rays, thankfully not on you and I,

but on dead people.

So, I've still got access to one of these dead people

called Frieda; she's falling apart, I'm afraid,

because she's very old and fragile.

But everyone on that bus is Frieda.

And the bus is taken with a cargo-scanning X-ray,

which is the sort of machine you have on borders,

which checks for contraband and drugs and bombs and things.

Fairly obvious what that is.

So, using large-scale objects

does sort of create drama

because you just don't see X-rays of big things that often.

Technology is moving ahead,

and these large cargo scanner X-rays

that work with the digital system are getting better and better and better.

Again though, to make it come alive

you need, somehow, to add the human element.

And I think the reason this image works, again, is because

Frieda is driving the bulldozer.

(Laughter)

Quite a difficult brief,

make a pair of men's pants look beautiful.

But I think the process, in itself, shows how exquisite they are.

Fashion -- now, I'm sort of anti-fashion because I

don't show the surface, I show what's within.

So, the fashionistas don't really like me

because it doesn't matter if Kate Moss is wearing it or if I'm wearing it,

it looks the same.

(Laughter)

We all look the same inside, believe me.

The creases in the material and the sort of nuances.

And I show things for really what they are, what they're made of.

I peel back the layers and expose it.

And if it's well made I show it, if it's badly made I show it.

And I'm sure Ross can associate that with design.

The design comes from within.

It's not just Topshop,

I get some strange looks when I go out getting my props.

Here I was fumbling around in the ladies' underwear department

of a department store, almost got escorted from the premises.

I live opposite a farm. And this was the runt of the litter, a piglet that died.

And what's really interesting is,

if you look at the legs, you'll notice that the bones haven't fused.

And should that pig have grown,

unfortunately it was dead, it would have certainly been dead

after I X-rayed it, with the amount of radiation I used anyway.

(Laughter)

But once the bones had fused together

it would have been healthy.

So, that's an empty parka jacket.

But I quite love the way it's posed.

Nature is my greatest inspiration.

And to carry on with a theme that we've already touched with

is how nature is related to architecture.

If you look at the roof of the Eden Project,

or the British library, it's all this honeycomb structure.

And I'm sure those architects are inspired,

as I am, by what surrounds us, by nature.

This, in fact, is a Victoria water lily leaf

that floats on the top of a pond.

An amaryllis flower looking really three-dimensional.

Seaweed, ebbing in the tide.

Now, how do I do this, and where do I do this, and all of that sort of thing.

This is my new, purpose-built, X-ray shed.

And the door to my X-ray room

is made of lead and steel.

It weighs 1,250 kilograms and the only exercise I get is opening and closing it.

(Laughter)

The walls are 700 millimeters thick of solid dense concrete.

So, I'm using quite a lot of radiation.

A lot more than you'd get in a hospital or a vet's.

And there I am. This is a quite high-powered X-ray machine.

What's interesting really about X-ray really

is, if you think about it, is that that technology

is used for looking for cancer or looking for drugs,

or looking for contraband or whatever.

And I use that sort of technology

to create things that are quite beautiful.

So, still working with film, I'm afraid.

Technology in X-ray where it's life-size processed,

apart from these large cargo-scanning machines,

hasn't moved on enough for the quality of the image

and the resolution to be good enough for what I want to do with it,

which is show my pictures big.

So, I have to use a 1980s drum scanner,

which was designed in the days when everyone shot photographs on film.

They scan each individual X-ray.

And this shows how I do my process of same-size X-rays.

So, this is, again, my daughter's dress.

Still has the tag in it from me buying it,

so I can take it back to the shop if she didn't like it.

But there are four X-ray plates.

You can see them overlapping.

So, when you move forward from something fairly small,

a dress which is this size,

onto something like that which is done in exactly the same process,

you can see that that is a lot of work.

In fact, that is three months solid X-raying.

There is over 500 separate components.

Boeing sent me a 747 in containers.

And I sent them back an X-ray.

(Laughter) I kid you not.

Okay, so Frieda is my dead skeleton.

This, unfortunately, is basically two pictures.

One on the extreme right is a photograph of an American footballer.

The one on the left is an x-ray.

But this time I had to use a real body.

Because I needed all the skin tissue to make it look real,

to make it look like it was a real athlete.

So, here I had to use a recently deceased body.

And getting a hold of that was extremely difficult and laborious.

But people do donate their bodies to art and science.

And when they do, I'm in the queue.

So, I like to use them.

(Laughter)

The coloring, so coloring adds another level to the X-rays.

It makes it more organic, more natural.

It's whatever takes my fancy, really.

It's not accurately colored to how it is in real life.

That flower doesn't come in bright orange, I don't think.

But I just like it in bright orange.

And also with something technical, like these are DJ decks,

it sort of adds another level.

It makes a two dimensional image look more three dimensional.

The most difficult things to X-ray,

the most technically challenging things to X-ray

are the lightest things, the most delicate things.

To get the detail in a feather,

believe me, if there is anyone out here who knows anything about X-rays,

that's quite a challenge.

I'm now going to show you a short film, I'll step to the side.

Video: (Music)

The thing in there is very dangerous.

If you touch that, you could possibly die

through radiation poisoning.

In my career I've had two exposures to radiation,

which is two too many, because it stays with you for life.

It's cumulative.

(Music)

It has human connotations.

The fact that it's a child's toy that we all recognize,

but also it looks like it's a robot,

and it comes from a sci-fi genus.

It's a surprise that it has humanity,

but also man-made, future, alien associations.

And it's just a bit spooky.

(Music)

The bus was done with a cargo-scanning X-ray machine,

which is used on the borders

between countries, looking for contraband and illegal immigrants.

The lorry goes in front of it. And it takes slices