OH Cards are a genre of special playing cards used as story–telling prompters, counseling and psychotherapeutic tools, communication enhancers, educational aids, and social interactive games. OH cards have no official or traditional interpretations of images, and instructions included with the decks encourage imaginative and personal interpretations of the images. Usually these images are small paintings created by various artists specifically for this kind of use. As a genre, OH cards are unconventional "information containers", unbound books with no set sequence of pages.
Their most common uses are as a focus for self–examination and as prompters in social interactions. They are often used as aides in psychotherapeutic settings, and in a variety of educational situations. Less commonly, OH cards are used as catalysts in artistic fields: in writing, painting, theatre, even dance.
Categorically OH Cards operate in the interface of literature, art appreciation, games and psychology. Most commonly they are used as a focus for self–examination. In some parts of the world they are called kesem cards or Cards of Association.
The OH Cards
The genre originated with the publication in 1982 of a set of two interrelated cards decks called The OH Cards, invented by Canadian artist Ely Raman, and first published in 1982, that consist of "…88 picture cards, supplemented by 88 word cards. To play, a picture card is placed inside a larger word card. The word, such as ‘game’, ‘love’, ‘grief’ or ‘letting go’ forms the framework for interpreting the picture. A total of 7744 combinations are possible."
In the first version, the words were in English, but within a few years they were translated into German, Dutch, and French. At this time (2023) The OH Cards, published in Germany by OH Publishing, are available in 28 languages including Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Turkish, and Romanian and are being used all over the world.
Most of these decks can be used for play, especially play that involves imagination and expression. The cards are not arranged in suits, nor are they numbered (except for a tiny identification number beside the copyright line), so they do not lend themselves to games that are hierarchical or competitive, with winners and losers and scores. This aspect is underlined by the OH Etiquette (see below); a set of "rules" that deal more with behaviour, attitude, and communication skills than with legalistic boundaries.
Development of the OH card genre
The OH genre grew slowly over the years, starting with the publication, in 1989, of Saga, a 55–card deck of paintings by Ely Raman illustrating scenes in possible fairy tales. Two years later American artist John David Ellis produced a deck of 99 cards with abstract paintings called ecco. The Canadian naturalist and artist Christian Gronau focused on our interaction with the natural environment with a deck of 88 cards called Habitat (1993). Ely Raman explored a different use of two–deck interactivity with a pair of decks called Persona (1994), one of portraits; the other of abstract designs that can symbolize possible social interactions or personal relationships.
For some reason, photographic images do not seem to stimulate imaginative responses. Orca, (1997), a deck about the environment inhabited by killer whales did not generate enough response to warrant a second printing despite the photos from Alexandra Morton’s collection; neither did Raccoon, (1996) a photo essay of a family of raccoons and their neighbours.
Hand–painted images fared better. Morená, (1996) a 2–deck pictorial record of the tribal life of the rain forest people painted lovingly by Brazilian artist Walde Mar de Andrade e Silva continues to charm and mystify users. A collection of Scheherazade–inspired paintings became a deck called 1001, (2003); they were painted by Canadian artist Andreé Pouliot Raman produced two more decks, a sister deck to Saga, called Mythos (2000) with a classical mythological theme, and –– in collaboration with Russian artist Marina Lukyanova –– a sister deck to Persona, called Personita, (2005), with portraits of children and ink sketches of stick–like figures in action. Lukyanova also painted the 88 picture cards for Cope (2002) a specialized deck addressing the trauma of children in war–torn areas, and used by therapists according to a detailed protocol. The deck was conceived by Ofra Ayalon, a renowned Israeli psychotherapist and Moritz Egetmeyer, the publisher of all of the decks in the OH-genre.