The Sacred Heart: An Atlas of the Body Seen Through Invasive Surgery

by Max Aguilera-Hellweg and M.D. Aguilera-Hellweg, Max

An accident cost professional photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg the use of his right arm for a year. Forced to work with a tripod and the larger format of 4-by-5-inch film, he was providentially... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0821223771
• ISBN13: 9780821223772
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Bulfinch Press
• Length: 126 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 9.3" x 11.4"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

Reality is too much for some people

This book is brave, and very well put-together. The work of photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg, whose shots can also be seen in the yearly calendar issued by Philadelphia's Mutter Museum, is brilliant in its lighting and composition.The subject, as revealed in the subtitle, is invasive surgery. Those who say the book is exploitative since the photographs are disturbing, probably need a Hallmark Card version of truth, and reality.Invasive surgery invades the body. There are not photographs of Kate Moss, though it might be of Kate Moss later in life after the effects of her smoking finally rear their ugly head. But the photos in The Sacred Heart really come to terms with the ugliness and contradictory beauty of the human body in its most elemental stage.The introduction is by Richard Selzer, whose other extremely readable books achieve direct paths to the most curious and disturbing aspects of what is seen by the doctor of medicine.

Both reverent and irreverant

There is no doubt in my mind that An Atlas of the Human Heart was a labor of love on the part of Max. The photographs are at once the most reverent and irreverant portrayals of the human body that I have ever seen. I will never quite be able to think of my body the same way again. Max's work is ambitious, inspiring, and challenging. The book gives you a glimpse of a truly sacred place -- the inside of the human body.

photos that make you feel squirmish and at awe all at once!

Max Aguilera-Hellweg has taken an often shot subject and developed his own point-of-view. The lighting is absolutely exquisite and can even be compared to Rembrandt. One certainly wouldn't be surprised to find out that this photographer is currently in med school. What he witnessed obviously made an impact on himself as it does to his viewers.

Inside the Body: The Holy and the Horrific

song@SanFrancisco There is a religiousity to the pictures that can only be seen to appreciate it. M. Aguilera-Hellweg portrays the awe and majesty of the inner physical self w/ such seduction and grace, we are enchanted by otherwise grotesque images of spines, sutures, and exposed craniums. Were it not for the perceptive and humanistic prose and accidentally dramatic lighting of the photos, most would distance themselves from the connotations of morbidity that such images would lend. Instead we are left enraptured by a secret inner world. I felt like a privileged patron, allowed access to a forbidden zone. Morbid curiousity might have been my initial inclinations but it developed into a profound sensibility that we are estranged from our own bodies much of the time. The ambiguity of an open cavity stretched out by latex covered hands in a scene that seems sensually mystifying makes you either question your sense of normalcy or it makes you reevaluate this inner landscape that you and most others revile in most other settings. There is an attempt to place the "soul" within these organs and cavities and the argument is persuasive; however, depending upon your metaphysical outlook (i.e., christian, atheist, mind-body dualist...), you may be open to it or taxed by it but the end result is the same. You are awed by the photos.

Astonishing photographs of surgeries with moving text.

Imagine as a layperson being a witness to 100 major surgeries and you've entered the world of Max Aguilera-Hellweg's incredible book, "The Sacred Heart." A review of this book of surgical photographs in the Los Angeles Times grabbed my attention. "...these images are so visually beautiful that you are drawn into them before you know what you're looking at . . .Most of us have some familiarity with medical photography, and though it's rarely pleasant, it generally has a clinical quality that allows us to distance ourselves from the events depicted. Aguilera-Hellweg upends that tradition as well; drawing a parallel between the invasiveness central to surgery and photography, he leaves the viewer no place to hide and pushes everything front and center." This is the only book I've ever experienced where you think twice about turning the page for fear of what you might see next. Check it out.