This image is from an ongoing project on the varied directions that research into Alzheimer’s Disease is taking, and shows the brain of a recently deceased person before slicing and storage in a container in the South Western Brain Bank, which acts as a resource for research into dementia.

I have been interested in Alzheimer’s research since my mother developed the disease a few years ago and as I work mainly on stock and editorial features about science & medical developments I wanted to look at the subject more closely.

Working with the brains was a little unsettling, & when I whimsically asked the neuroscientist holding this brain where the first kiss would be stored, I just received a blank stare!

Although coloured gels in science pictures seem now to be very old-fashioned, they were used here to separate the white gloved hand & monochrome brain from the white plastic boxes in the tiny room which constitutes the Brain Bank.

Fascinated by science and its images since schooldays, James King-Holmes has been a pro photographer since the 1970s when he worked from central London on features & editorial portraits, but now specialises in science and technology for stock and editorial features, with corporate work for clients such as Hewlett Packard Laboratories and some of the science-based companies around Oxford, where he now lives. He is also a member of the Association of British Science Writers.

Photographer since 1974, EPUK member since 2002.