Dr. Ikkaku Ochi collection
Ochi, Ikkaku
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- Author
- Ochi, Ikkaku
- Publisher
- Scalo
- ISBN
- 9783908247715
- Language
- English
- Condition notes
- 2003, 215 pp, hardback with dust jacket
- Category
- Hobby › Photo album
About this book
In an unassuming wooden chest that had not been opened for a long time, Akimitsu Naruyama discovered 365 photographs of people with congenital and pathological deformities. After viewing just a few photographs, the Japanese art dealer and collector knew he had discovered an extraordinary collection of photographs. ~Ikkaku Ochi, a doctor and photography enthusiast, practised his profession in Okayama, a prefecture on Shikoku, one of Japan’s southern islands. In the final decade of the 19th century, he had his patients photographed, resulting in images that differ strikingly from contemporary medical photographs, which serve purely as educational material and rarely as sensitive portraits of the sick. Ochi’s patients were captured with dignity and respect, although the exposed, diseased parts of their bodies are explicitly depicted – images that may not be suitable for sensitive viewers. Individual photographs depict the physical manifestations of late-stage syphilis, elephantiasis of the testicles or breasts, and other medical conditions – conditions that are now almost entirely controlled by medication or vaccination.~Cruel and melancholic, these photographs possess, today, an undeniable elegance and an unsettling beauty – qualities that Akimitsu Naruyama recognised immediately when he opened that forgotten wooden chest. Curated by Akimitsu Naruyama.