Since 1991 the work of Xavier Lucchesi has been closely bound to radiology. Diverting medical imaging from its supporting role of information and interpretation, he gives it the status of representation and of artistic creation, using the technique as a passage from one state of the image to another and playing on negative and positive, true and false, outside and inside. Since 1996 he has worked in partnership with major museums. This volume gathers the radiography of African sculptures from the collections of the musée du quai Branly. Rather than a clinical operation — as in medical radiography, which seeks a hidden truth — his is an operation that extracts the work, primitive or otherwise, from its status as a museum object condemned to the mere representation of itself.