More from ikkaku ochi-- these images are really the starting point for my project they are from a beautiful book simpy entitled 'dr.ikkaku ochi'. the book contains absolutely no text and the images are presented single sidedly, what this creates is a stunning, minimalist collection of photos that challenge both of these ideas. the book's layout exaggerates the morbid beauty of each photo and lets them each speak for itself; by this i mean the lack of writing and any sort of explanation simply makes this a book of photographs to be appreciated for their beauty rather than the meaning of the content. i have looked at other books such as the mutter museum book which contains explanations of each illness which also has its merits, obviously when looking at it from a factual point of view however i still think that this is a stunning layout. and as for the charactersnitially, we struggle to place them in context without the blurbs on each page. It is only through the their dress, race and facial expression that we can begin to identify them. These drawings beg the question of what might have caused these injuries? Is it some horrible accident, warfare, or birth defect? It is these questions that tap into our own deepest fears it is these questions that make this a truly mesmerising book.
here is a short blurb that i found on www.anobii.com that exemplifies what i have been trying to say about the book
In an inconspicuous wooden box that had long gone unopened, Akimitsu Naruyama discovered 365 photographs of people with congenital and pathological deformations. After looking at just a few pictures, the Japanese art dealer and collector knew that he had discovered an extraordinary collection of photographs. ~A doctor and photography enthusiast, Ikkaku Ochi practiced his profession in Okayama, a prefecture of Shikoku, one of Japan's southern islands. He had his patients photographed during the last decade of the 19th century, producing images that are strikingly distinct from contemporary medical photographs, which serve as mere educational material and rarely as sensitive portraits of the diseased. Ochi's patients were recorded with dignity and respect, though the exposed, diseased parts of their bodies are explicitly documented and not for the squeamish. Individual photographs reveal the physical manifestations of syphilis in its final stages, elephantiasis of the testes or breasts, and other medical conditions--conditions that today are almost completely suppressed by medication or vaccination.~Cruel and melancholic, these photographs seen today possess an undeniable elegance and uncomfortable beauty, qualities that Akimitsu Naruyama recognized immediately when he opened that forgotten wooden box/span>