An essay by Sue Prideaux on the influence of photography and x-rays on the paintings of Edvard Munch.

Prideaux writes that Munch "is best known for his pictures of moody lovers and tortured souls. However, these were not merely a product of his feverish imagination. His paintings, prints and ghostly photographs reflected a contemporary fascination with spiritualism… the supernatural, the occult and the newly discovered X-ray… [Munch] was fascinated by how spiritualist photographs, with their apparent synthesis of the material and the immaterial, assuaged the public’s hunger for a return to the spiritual and the sacred that mere Naturalist depiction ignored."

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye is on view at Tate Modern through October 14, 2012.