O.G. Mason
1880-1885 (ca)
Onychia

Collotype, hand-coloured
Private collection of John Wood
Poem: Questions for the Viewer
 
Can you clear your mind of disease,
approach this image with the ease
of having just opened a book
on Man Ray and taken a look?
 
Is this the hand you know from dreams,
the one that does the sexual crimes,
that lifts a wrought iron rod against
the screaming heads, the breaking breasts?
 
And could those fingers' stunning red
be on a hand of pure hatred,
an intense grip you dream and plan
for the necks of haughty women?
 
And is that rag around the bar
not just to make your prints obscure
and hide your face from fist-black dreams
but gag her cries and choke her screams?
 
Or do you love to hear her beg,
to hear her sob, to finally gag
and puke at a cock's dumb power
to break her down, make her cower?
 
Oh, Mr. Sinister, just say
what it is you've put away
within that box. Something pretty?
A photograph's worst memory?
 
John Wood
 
Source
 
John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.]
 
LL/37722