More hands.

The expressiveness of hands is a well known and studied fact in the field of visual arts. It’s one of the basic exercises in drawing/painting/sculpting classes in any art school, and one that is easy to track in the history of art, western, eastern or most likely any other. In photography we rely on body language quite often – whether posed or candid, bodies speak. This is of course just a part of the whole puzzle, but an important one.

Psychology is different from symbolism, or suggested meaning though. Gestures are a part of culture – I’m sure anyone can come up with several straight away, a few rude ones, a few polite ones and so on – and as such are quite open to interpretation when shown in slightly different than expected circumstances. Have fun playing with your own symbols.

I wasn’t consciously hunting for expressive hands today, by no means. I am aware some people work like that, setting themselves a topic for the day/week/life. I don’t. It just so happened, they were all there, waiting to be photographed.