STOP WAR
Hands are important; they are our universal toolkit that has made a fundamental contribution to our transformation into human beings. They are flexible, mobile, and usually very photogenic as well.
And they are one of the most expressive parts of our body: they gesture, they allow the speechless to communicate through sign language, they grasp and use objects and tools—in a word, they work—and at the same time, as has already been authoritatively stated on these very pages, they reveal to those who know how to look at them the life, death, and miracles of their owners.
And of course, they have been painted, drawn, and photographed countless times; I’d just like to mention the most famous hands—those of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, or the marvelous, tangible, and powerful hands that characterize all of Picasso’s work, regardless of style or period. And in photography? Starting with the amusing, witty, yet deeply insightful portrait taken by Doisneau of Picasso himself and his hands, to those of Georgia O’Keeffe photographed by Stieglitz and beyond—from Irving Penn to Mapplethorpe—it’s a veritable anthology of powerful images of hands.
Just as the eyes have been defined as ‘a mirror of the soul’.
But whose soul? I dare to ask.
When hands are portrayed and transformed into a photographic image, I believe this question becomes pertinent.
