a show of hands

Artist’s Statement

My project A SHOW OF HANDS presents a personal universal of human condition. Human hand is a universal symbol of action. We are received by hands when we come into this world and we are laid to rest when it is our time to leave it. Everything that happens in between is done by human hands. We vote, create, fight and caress. We are identified by our fingerprints. The hand is both unique and universal. Portraits of hands allow me to respect the privacy of my subjects while bringing to the foreground what makes them one of a kind. Picasso said, “What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

My photographs are never staged. I photograph hands when and where I get a chance to catch them in action. Through my photographs I express the warmth of human connection. I give the viewer a chance to hold another human hand and be supported by it. Each of these encounters is a fleeting moment caught in time never to be repeated. It is impermanent, imperfect and incomplete. It is up to the viewer to make a handshake, to complete the story and to acknowledge the dignity of another human being.

I am a haiku poet and my photographs are inspired by the aesthetics of wabi-sabi. I photograph because human hands give me “aha” moments about who I am and insights about other human beings. Portraits of hands show the core of who we are on the road of life.

a crumbled piece of paper

precious

the hand it touched

/published in Modern Haiku, 2020/