when I was doing a lot of commercial photography for a living I would occasionally need to hire a model. One of the first thing I would look at when interviewing was her hands. Were the hands slender and fingers long? Were the nails well groomed? Were her gestures graceful? Certain cultures are known for their expressive use of gestures. Doctors and musicians' hands rarely show the signs of hard manual labor that a farmer or construction worker's hands might. It is not only human intelligence that has allowed civilization to flourish. Our hands have built it. Our opposable thumbs have provided humans a dexterity matched only by other primates. That ability to grasp gave the earliest hominids the incentive to create tools. And eventually, we would have cameras.
One of the ongoing activities of the OBSERVE international photography collective is for members to issue a theme that all members will either create new images for, or select archive images. Then it is up to the "theme giver" to create a gallery of twenty-eight images which would, but not necessarily, represent two images per member. I was very grateful to be able to curate what I feel is an excellent representation of the theme, Hands, they speak their own language.
Please take a moment to view the collection of images here, and if you use Facebook, follow OBSERVE there. Many more good things to come!
posted by Greg Allikas, October 16, 2013