Item #203 c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION
c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION

c. 1900 JAPANESE MEDICAL CDV PHOTO COLLECTION

Item #203

There are nineteen striking and sensitive CDV photo portraits of physically afflicted people of Japan in this collection. The photos document Japanese medical patients suffering from congenital and pathological deformities, the patients of Dr. Ikkaku Ochi of Okayama, in Shikoku prefecture. Six of these twenty photos are featured in the book “Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection,” published in 2004. The publisher’s description tells it best:

The Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection: Medical Photographs from Japan around 1900
By Sumio Ishida

The photos are faded and some have creased/edge wear. A copy of the book is also included.

Edited by Akimitsu Naruyama
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, elephantitis 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.

Price: $3,200.00

See all items in Asia, Medical, Photo Lots