Dain L. Tasker (1872-1964) was an American physician and photographer whose remarkable X-ray photographs of flowers established him as one of the most inventive figures in the history of botanical imaging. Born in the United States, Tasker pursued a career in medicine and served for many years as chief radiologist at the Wilshire Hospital in Los Angeles. His professional expertise with X-ray technology, developed over decades of medical practice, would eventually give rise to the extraordinary artistic project for which he is now remembered.

Tasker began experimenting with X-ray photography of flowers during the 1930s, using the same equipment he employed in his medical practice to produce images that revealed the delicate internal structure of blossoms in ways that no ordinary camera could achieve. His photographs of lilies, orchids, tulips, sunflowers, poppies, and other floral subjects captured the intricate skeletal architecture of each bloom, showing veins, stems, pistils, and the layered translucent petals with a ghostly luminosity that transformed familiar botanical subjects into images of striking beauty and quiet mystery.

Working entirely outside the mainstream photographic community, Tasker produced his X-ray flower studies as a serious artistic pursuit alongside his medical career. His images appeared in Popular Photography, American Photography, and other significant journals during the 1930s, and they attracted attention from photographers, botanists, and general audiences drawn to the marriage of scientific technique and aesthetic sensibility. His work stands within a small but distinguished tradition of medical and scientific photographers who transformed the technical imagery of their professions into serious art, and his floral X-rays anticipate later artistic engagements with radiographic and other invisible-spectrum imaging.

Tasker's X-ray photographs have undergone significant critical reassessment in recent decades, and his images have been acquired by major photographic collections and featured in important exhibitions devoted to the intersection of art and science. His floral X-rays are held today in the collections of major American museums, where they continue to be recognized as some of the most singular and quietly beautiful botanical photographs of the twentieth century.