Newsletter #172 - Give me a hand

Hold on to this one tight.

Last month I hurt my hand. Specifically, my left ring finger. I will spare you the details since the accident was extraordinarily cringeworthy and it makes me uncomfortable even thinking about it.

But the whole event got me thinking about hands and how important they are.

Not just functionally, in life, but their importance in art. Hands actually have this outsized role in art and photography.

I think a lot of people find hands, and images of them, inherently interesting.

They are something I have always tended to focus on, and many other artists have too.

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Throughout art history, hands have been notoriously difficult to depict. Even the masters struggled - there's a reason you see so many portrait paintings where hands are conveniently tucked into pockets or hidden behind backs.

And when they did show them, they often looked... weird.

The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest by El Greco

Photography solved the anatomical accuracy problem but introduced new challenges. Like what do you tell someone to do with their hands when they don’t know what to do with their hands?

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Thinking about this made me want to find photographs I’ve made in which hands were an important part of the composition. I spent hours going through my archive looking for compelling images of hands.

I found thousands.

As I looked through them, I remembered what drew me to photograph hands in the first place.

A clenched fist, an open palm, intertwined fingers - each gesture telling its own story.

Or is it?

Did I actually capture something meaningful, or did I just press the shutter at a random moment and then ascribe meaning to it in retrospect?

Are these photographs even good?

My hand hurts just thinking about it.

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See also: Hand-in-Waistcoat

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Kristen Neufeld is right-handed but her left hand is more photogenic.
Zach Vitale won a webby for his website about hands.

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