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Talk about dedication! It took photographer Robert Buelteman 13 years to create these eye-popping images of electrocuted flowers.

He didn’t use a camera, but rather a painstaking photogram process involving plexiglas, silicone and 80,000 volts of electricity — a technique first developed in the 1930s by Russian inventor Semyon Kirlian.

First he whittles flowers down to transparency with a scalpel, and places them between color transparency film, a diffusion screen and sheet metal, all of which floats in liquid silicone sandwiched by plexiglas.

Then Buelteman shocks the prepared materials with 80,000 volts from an electric pulse, shooting electrons through the sheet metal and flower. Finally, he uses a hair-thin fiber optic flashlight to develop the image, leaving what Kirlian called the “aura,” or “life-force” of a living organism. 

“I decided I wanted to approach photography as more of a full self-expression, without regard to realism or capturing images that are recognizable,” Buelteman told The Daily. “This world is about the world as sensed, it’s beyond description and beyond meaningful interpretation.”

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149 Notes

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  11. kosmoskrap reblogged this from thedailyfeed and added:
    Wow.
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    Too amazing for words…
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    This is freakin sweet
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    He didn’t use a camera, but rather a painstaking photogram process involving plexiglas, silicone and 80,000 volts of...
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  21. sahi-kan said: Wow!!!…this pics are absolutely mind blowing..
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  24. myview365 reblogged this from thedailyfeed and added:
    Life force photography #365
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